Updated: Apr 7
This will take less than 5 minutes to read, 15 minutes to execute and a lifetime to benefit from. Think about all those tasks you put off. At home or in your business. Bring one to the front of your mind now. The solution is in 15 minutes. Yes, you read right, so keep reading.
Problem – that big task
Life is busy, we’re parents, children, employees, hobbyists and a million other hats. It’s hard to find the time to shower some days, let alone catch up with friends or read a book, so the task we least want to do, or best feel we can get away with delaying, is the one that falls to the back of the pile.
When we do get a minute, we’re tired. It’s been a long week, a long month, a long 2020 and now a long 2021, who are we kidding? We are tired of the news, our job, the endless school permission forms (or is that just me?). So we put the task off until tomorrow optimistically hoping that after a good nights sleep it will be easier and we will get it done.
The catch is that the longer we put it off the harder the task becomes. We feel the pressure more which makes some of us want to put if off more. Or maybe it was hard to get inspired, hard to just begin. I know many of our excuses. Sitting in a café writing this, I have even felt a few of them for this blog task. But I had 15 minutes.
Solution – 15 minutes
15 minutes isn’t long. I’ve waited 15 minutes for a coffee before. We’ve all wasted 15 minutes scrolling Facebook or Instagram, playing mindless time wasting games on our phones or perhaps just staring into space when we should be doing something else. What if you told yourself you only had to do the task you have been putting off for 15 minutes?
15 minutes worth of cleaning out the pantry. 15 minutes starting that chapter for your book. 15 minutes updating your LinkedIn profile. Can you handle just 15 minutes of it? Promise yourself that you can stop after 15 minutes. This is an important part.
If 15 minutes is literally all you have then you are now 15 minutes closer to finishing the task. It doesn’t matter what the task is. However, if you have more than 15 minutes available you may find that you are on a roll now and continue on for another 15 minutes. Maybe you will even finish the task or go on all day.
By giving yourself permission to stop after 15 minutes even the most enormous task seems less daunting, after all, you are only having a look, dipping a toe. You don’t have to finish, or even commit a day. It’s like the Chinese Proverb, ‘The journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step’. The longest task begins with 15 minutes.
What will you give 15 minutes to today?