Working for 15 Minutes

 
Two-Minute Rule. A staple of productivity.  If a small task can be done in two minutes or slightly more, just do it. Despite my assorted annoyances with my current low-end smartwatch, it has an easily accessible two-minute countdown timer.  In that time, I can wash all four of the coffee mugs that fit on the outer holders of my dish rack.  If I want to wash utensils, I can do about two place settings before my wrist buzzes.  Watering my aerogarden takes less time than that, even if I have to fill up the two-liter harvested juice jug with fresh water.  Refreshing the potted herbs outside my front door takes a little longer.

Indeed, I can time most any task.  Not how long it takes to do, but how long I am willing to work on it.  My semi-annual projects for this cycle include things that have a lot of steps.  Slow and steady wins the ketchup race, the commercial from my childhood taught me.  Repurposing my adult son's bedroom will take many hours.  Boxes everywhere.  Paper dating back to grade school. Crammed dresser and nightstand drawers.  A desk that he rarely used but was my pride to provide it for him.  Electronics long gone obsolete.  That gets fifteen minutes per session on my timer.  I shoot for two sessions per week, but if only fifteen minutes at a time, I could do more without feeling overwhelmed.  And with the ability to sort things that he may treasure, his awards, birthday cards, special clothing.  Fifteen minutes of sorting or washing or discarding at a time gets it done over about three months.

My own bedroom gets only ten minutes at a time, two or three sessions a week.  I've already been able to vacuum my half.  Surfaces have started to appear functional, sorting just a few sections at a time while discarding very little.

My Space only gets six minutes at a time.  Not that I am unwilling to allocate more of my attention, but after six minutes something stymies additional progress.  But I can see more than an end point.  I recently recaptured my beloved Lands End Canvas Attaché, an indulgence purchase early in my career.  The Eddie Bauer cloth attache sits next to my desk chair.  It holds recreational items, mostly art.  And next to that I store a leather briefcase, purchased for $60 with the intent of looking upscale professional.  It's rarely been toted anywhere.  The cloth ones with neck straps captured the market due to better utility.  The leather one with its dual handles lets me see what I once aspired to have.  Six minutes at a time will bring My Space to what I had envisioned as what I would really do with a personalized part of my house, right down to my display of collegiate coffee mugs from the many campuses I've visited.  My many diplomas sit wrapped and in storage.  My Space has no reason to morph into a monument to myself.

My projects also include expressing myself in various ways as I move into the years of limited anticipated longevity.  Can I write a 90K word book?  If I set my timer for 90 minutes and write 750 words, it will add up.  

Other goals, or really systems to reach those goals, do not adapt as easily to a timer.  My treadmill sessions have a count-up timer, 30 minutes.  I set the intensity.  Stretching has a program of 8 minutes spread over 16 half-minute exercises.  I plan to host three dinners to challenge my creativity, social skills, and kitchen expertise.  Pulling this off requires steps, some like stove or oven times dictated by recipes.  I guess I could surf or read cookbooks for soup or dessert options using a timer, but this type of task I tend to work until the step has been completed.  I like going on day trips, having done one of the three intended for this cycle.  The timer does not aid in completing this.  Rather, I pick a day, destination, starting time, and return time, then do it as a unified effort.  Once every November, I deal with my IRA.  This includes allocation to charities working with my financial advisor, then a few weeks later, depositing the rest of my mandatory withdrawal in my checking account or a different investment account.  The timer doesn't properly segment everything.

But a third of the way through this semi-annual cycle, I've done rather well, even on my manuscript.  The short bursts seem productive, not at all stressful. Visible progress appears.  It makes for a good system to bring difficult initiatives to completion, something that has chronically challenged me.

Two Minute Rule

My smartwatch has a timer, an application not as well thought out by the designers as some of its other features.  It enables one touch application of a countdown from one to six minutes.  It makes the Two Minute Rule easy to implement.

Procrastination has always plagued me.  Eventually I come through, but after endless excuses to postpone.  My daily task list always has something that takes under two minutes.  Swallowing my pills, weighing myself every Monday morning, measuring my blood pressure with an automated cuff, counting the Omer every nightfall between Pesach and Shavuot.  I do them all.  Quick check marks.  Most things take longer.  When I make tomorrow's Daily Task List each nignt, my designation isolates tasks that take less than ten minutes, not two.  Performance on these short items is very uneven, not because I shun them as much as their lower priority.  Big projects, multi-day and multi-week initiatives, take hours, not minutes.  The individual steps may take only minutes, which makes the Two Minute Rule so valuable.

Most psychologists have concluded that once people have passed a certain threshold of activity, typically two minutes, they do not stop that activity.  Knowing that they can end their effort offers some control.  I will do this with some repetitive chores.  How much underwear can I fold in two minutes?  How many coffee cups can I wash?  I certainly could make the endpoint six t-shirts or five coffee cups.  But timing activity to a clock, one that will count down, has the advantage of going to completion.  I can always stop when my smartwatch signals two minutes, knowing I have completed my obligation.  I cannot wash three cups and tell myself I've done five.

In reality, though, people judge us, and we assess ourselves, by how much we accomplish, not how much time we spend working on it.  So real two minute tasks like making a k-cup of coffee have something to show for the brief effort.  Putting on running shoes but not running does not.  Some things you have to intend to perform, not just start.

Exercise on a treadmill and stretching with a YouTube video serve as hybrids.  I've never liked doing either.  It wouldn't occur to me to start for two minutes then decide whether to proceed to completion.  The treadmill has a set distance, typically four or five electronic display laps, and a set speed.  I need to do the program.  Once the laps reach the pre-set conclusion., I look at the machine's timer, then extend to a time-determined landmark.  The stretch takes 8 minutes spread evenly over 16 exercises.  I do not mentally credit myself until the final stretch of the right side of the neck at the video's end.  

My fondness for the kitchen does not adapt well to the Two Minute Rule.  Certainly I can set two place settings or transfer the refrigerated ingredients to the table in that let's start mode, but creating something edible, or even whipping something properly with an electric mixer really takes as much time as required.

Despite the Two Minute Rule's limitations, no worthy efforts can succeed without the first step.  Two Minutes offers that first step, always preferable to not taking that first step.

Stay at Home

I cannot remember the last day that I did not go anywhere.  Even during the pandemic's peak, every day I would go to my car, then drive a route, usually stopping at a store briefly just to be someplace other than my house.  Today my Daily Task List only has one errand that would take me someplace else, one easily postponed.  My OLLI class in the afternoon is by Zoom from my laptop.  Plumbers scheduled to do some major revisions to our systems.  No reason to even get into my car today.  Indeed, an opportunity to focus on things I've been procrastinating.

As much as I like driving from place to place, settling in the lounge chairs then classrooms at OLLI, shopping at Trader Joe's and traversing the aisles of Shop-Rite, getting from place to place generally adds another hour that could be devoted to other things.  Not having a place outside my house that demands my presence, today would be an optimal opportunity to do some of those things I should do but make excuses to postpone. 

Doing the Noodgies

My Daily Task List has its share of items that repeat, even some that reflect Semi-Annual projects.  There is always an excuse to put certain things off, that evil of procrastination.  I'm not lazy, nor are most people who keep deferring what they ought to be doing.  Sometimes these postponed activities really are less important than the ones actively pursued.  Often they have no deadline beyond what is self-imposed.  Invariably there is no immediate adverse consequence to neglecting them. And sometimes they are ignored for the right reason, as in not really part of essential personal objectives.  Whatever the reason, legit, psychological, laziness, these tasks never really exit the Daily Task List, which functions in the manner of a Roach Motel, checking in but never checking out.  They are often noodgie things, stuff that will bring satisfaction, sometimes even important, but often tedious to do.  And sometimes there is a fear, mostly legit, of what will be disclosed once pursued.

Because of this, I designated today to tackle those repetitive items on my Daily Task List that have long overstayed their welcome.

As usual, I created this day's list from my weekly objectives, which are the action elements of my Semi-Annual personal goals.  I then circled in red, the items which had been neglected too long.

1. Read a news article clipped from the paper but not read for weeks since its publication.
2. Submit an op-ed I had written a few weeks ago which depended on my understanding that article.
3. A Committee that I recently joined asked me to do something.
4. I've not opened the Recreation Case that I created months ago. It's a canvas attaché where I keep art and drawing supplies mostly.
5. Spend an evening with my wife.
6. Track down my aging step-mother, my father's widow, who had some phone number changes.
7. Speak to my attorney on a lingering matter.
8. Outline the novel that will make me famous, or maybe the subject should be its non-fiction theme.
9. Start writing a paragraph or two to confirm I am serious about authoring an 80K word work.
10. Decide what car repairs should be done soon and which can wait.
11. Get my snowblower functional before the next coating, on a day unseasonably warm but damp.

Each item on my list for weeks, some longer.  Each repetitively pre-empted by something else for the right reason, or my psyche imposing avoidance for the wrong reason.

So how'd I do?

Read the article.  Even tried to nominate the article for a local reporting Pulitzer.  Deadline for nomination tonight.  I did not know how to use the form and really didn't want to pay the $75 submission form, so I wrote to the newspaper's editor and asked him to consider dealing with the Pulitzer possibility.

Deferred submitting op-ed to next week, to see if the editor-in-chief responds to me first.

Probably better to do the committee work when I go on site in two weeks.

Drew a pear with my drawing pencil.

Wife time after supper

Stepmother tomorrow.  Found the most recent phone numbers.

Spoke to attorney for 20 minutes.  He reassured my worst fears.

Started the novel outline but spent less time on it than allotted by my timer.

So not a bad effort considering these are the things I have avoided the most.  And I still had some time for reading the things I read each day, posting on restricted social media, reconnecting with a friend or two, taking care of a bank errand, slicing the cantaloupe I bought yesterday, doing the scheduled treadmill and stretch, going out for coffee, reviewing some commentaries on the upcoming Torah portion. 

Write when my outline is further along.

Chose the repairs.  Schedule them tomorrow

Too damp for snowblower repair, which needs to take place outside.

There will always be projects that for the right or wrong reasons, I just don't care to do.  But I did a lot of them by assigning a day, and even designated times within the day to set aside the more attractive efforts to place some of the others as rediscovered.  There is something very gratifying to do some of these things, even when their appearance on successive Daily Task Lists drags indefinitely.  And the stuff that I usually gravitate to, those Semi-Annual initiatives, did not get seriously neglected from a one day diverted effort.  

Do It First

Do the things you are mostly likely to make excuses not to do first.  For me, that's the treadmill, or really tackling the book I've increasingly committed myself to write.  But the treadmill session is far easier to put on a schedule and do it at a set time, usually around 8:30AM on scheduled days.  I don't especially like to stretch either.  That comes at 4PM on scheduled days.  Writing doesn't come as easy to schedule, let alone do first as a task to complete quickly.  My physical sessions get checked off as accomplished, those one and done's.  Mental tasks don't unless I have a submission deadline, which I don't for this landmark work that I want to do.

I have friends and relatives with books to their name, some more than one.  Nearly all my humanities professors have authored books.  And I read articles daily, and about six full books each semi-annual cycle.  So I know it is doable.  And like anything else doable but difficult, specific time needs to be allocated for it.  I've also told a few people of my intentions, which should place my feet a little closer to the fire on getting it done.

Do it first, or at least at a set time.  Pretty successful with exercise.  Reasonably successful with daily reading of The Atlantic-The Forward- TED talk which I target for mid-afternoon every day.  Furrydoc.blogspot.com has accumulated by daily effort each morning.  Hakaras HaTov log filling with entries five days a week.  And a weekly YouTube of Dr. Plotzker's Mind seems to be posted consistently nearly every Monday night.  And my Medscape column made it to the editor on deadline for years, though with the incentive of a contractual payment for performance.

I really want the book as my legacy.  I know how to go about it.  Now I need to go about it.