Hey. What’s up. Vihan here. I’m sure this sounds familiar to you. You’re about to start a new
habit and you feel this surge of motivation to do it and tell yourself that you’ll keep
it going so that you can become better at it. Fast forward a few weeks into the future. All
of your drive has gone, procrastination has become your best friend and you’re struggling
to find the ability to even care about this habit anymore. Well, you’re not the only one,
but there is a way to solve this habit once and for all and it’s called the 2 Minute Rule.
The 2 Minute Rule was first put forth by productivity expert David Allen in his book
Getting Things Done. It encompasses the idea that if a positive activity takes 2 minutes or less to
do, you should just get it out of the way. Don’t think about it, don’t add it to your to-do list,
don’t put it off for later. Do it now. Do it! Now, Two minutes is mostly an arbitrary number.
What this rule is really suggesting is that if the effort to keep remembering a task
is more than just getting it out of the way now, then you’re better off just doing it.
The push to simply get a 2 minute task done is also because the time spent
adding it to your schedule could easily exceed the time it takes to just complete the task.
Think about reading an email and then marking it as unread so that you can deal with it later. If
it can be knocked out in a couple of minutes, then just get it done otherwise add it to your to-do
list. I’ve found it helpful to apply this to other parts of my life like taking the trash out after
dinner, or making the bed right after I wake up. You end up saving yourself time that would have
been wasted on reviewing the same task on your to-do list over and over again. Not
to mention, reducing anxiety and boosting your self-confidence when you get more things done.
When it comes to being consistent with a habit, our motivation tends to decrease
over time and this is generally because of the high expectations that we place on ourselves.
If you keep thinking that you have to get through an hour long workout everyday,
you’re bound to be daunted by that and possibly even give it up altogether.
So one of the things that I’ve started doing is writing down habits that I want to maintain on a
sheet of paper. Once I’ve listed those items out on one column, on another column, I write down
what the 2 minute version of that habit would be. So for instance,
I want to exercise 5 times a week and the 2 minute version would be doing 20 push-ups and sit-ups.
I also want to write my scripts for an hour everyday. The 2 minute version would be opening
up my laptop and writing one additional sentence. I also want to finish reading a book a month. The
2 minute version of that would be reading a page before bed.
By breaking down your massive goal into small 2-minute’ chunks,
you can build momentum and trick your mind into taking more action than what you
initially set out to do in those 2 minutes. Essentially this becomes a ‘gateway habit’.
By shifting our focus from the intimidating end result to simply getting started today,
we can overcome the mental roadblocks that cause procrastination.
You have to be mindful to not use the 2 minute rule to fuel your procrastination
because it becomes easy to jump from task to task simply because it takes a couple minutes
or less. This ends up completely derailing you from your objectives. I instead recommend using
this rule as a hack to gain momentum towards your priorities and goals. Once you start doing
something, it’s easier to continue doing it. By focusing on doing something small everyday,
that final result that you’re striving for ends up becoming a by-product of that consistency.
In his book, Atomic Habits, author James Clear has explained that the
two-minute rule reinforces the identity you want to build.
So if you show up at the gym five days in a row — even if it’s just for two minutes — you’re
casting a vote for your new identity. It’s not so much about focusing on getting in shape.
Instead it’s about becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. You’re essentially
taking the smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be. So don’t forget to Vote!
It may seem odd to place something like reading just one page or doing 2 minutes of push ups on
a pedestal. But the point is to use those 2 minutes to master the habit of showing up.
You need to successfully establish a habit before you can integrate it into
your life and perfect it. Because if you can’t learn how to show up consistently,
then you’ll have much more of an uphill battle if you want to master something.
When you’re struggling with your habits, just know that writing one sentence is better than not
writing at all. Eating one apple is better than not improving your diet at all. The 2–Minute Rule
isn’t about the results you achieve, but rather about the process of actually doing the work.
So I hope that you can use the 2 minute rule to get past the hardest part of any new habit
which is simple getting started—not just the first time, but every time. I hope that you’ve
been enjoying this habit series of videos. If you’ve missed any of the previous videos,
definitely check them out right here. Drop a like on this video if you found
it helpful. And please subscribe and come on back for more from me every single week.
Thanks so much for watching. My name is Vihan Chelliah. See you next time.