How to Stop Procrastinating by Following The 2-Minute Rule
If you haven't heard of this time management technique yet, you're going to love it...
TL;DR: If it takes less than two minutes, do it now! That's the whole magic in one little sentence. It's the secret to increasing your productivity several times over. Let's repeat it one more time slightly differently: "Don't put off a task that would take less than 2 minutes to get done. Get it done immediately."
When you think about it, it's surprising how much can be done in 2 minutes. For example:
- Reply to an email
- Make a phone call
- Schedule a meeting with your colleagues
- Buy a flight ticket
- and a million other small but important things...
The 2-minute rule is great for "clearing" our head. Many of us have a head full of thoughts about unfinished projects that ultimately cause us stress. These stressors are small, tedious and perhaps unpleasant tasks that can be gotten out of our system very quickly. Just get them done.
Do you need to make a dentist appointment? Do you need to schedule a review session with your boss or your employee? We people naturally steer away from tasks that for whatever reason we don't like. However, by procrastinating we ultimately cause more harm than good.
Write down every small task that you plan to do someday soon. You will be surprised how many of them be actually done in less than two minutes.
From now, if a task comes to you, and it doesn't take you more than 2 minutes to do it, do it immediately. Don't write it down in your to-do list. Don't think to yourself "Yeah, I gonna do it tomorrow." Don't put it off until later. Finish it now.
The two-minute rule is simple to understand a simple to follow. Create a habit of urgency. Start small. Start today.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Perfection, then, is not an act, but a habit."
– Aristotle