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.

Regimenting

Keeping myself to a schedule has largely collapsed since retiring.  I can no longer even get up when the wrist alarm buzzes, though I'm pretty good at dental hygiene, getting coffee, and reviewing my Daily Task List once put myself upright.  Then the days get largely amorphous, lots of things I could do, some notion of priority, but no fixed time to do most of them.  I typically go through the list periodically, deciding what I could do right now, and for the most part pick one.  What I've not done well is decide what I am going to do at 1 PM or any other fixed time.  I much prefer the freedom of not having timed appointments, even appointments with myself, though I suspect the things that have gone best are those when I have some notion of when during my day I will tackle a particular initiative.  Treadmill after coffee, shabbos dinner on Friday afternoon.  Those all get done.  Plan tomorrow, or write in my Hakaras HaTov Log, after supper, weekly YouTube entry Monday after supper.  Those always get done, probably because I have generated an habitual time for completing them.  Probably need to create writing time, work on house time, and some other major categories.  There are now scheduling programs and apps that may make this easier.  I think it will also make me more productive.

Personal Prohibitions

As I work on my personal productivity, or maybe efficiency, getting rid of distractions has been more helpful than purposeful scheduling with mandatory doing.  Thou shalt nots come more easily than thou musts.  My long legacy of kashrut has made avoidance of certain foods rather easy, protection of shabbos by banning otherwise pleasurable weekday pursuits has imposed more of a challenge with a successful trajectory overall.  So if I want to reduce my weight, exercising has been a chore but not putting cookies or soda into the shopping cart goes easily.  I've moved onto harder prohibitions.  Sleep needs to be improved, having had a major setback.  I will now not return to bed until my assigned bedtime once I arise.  No more catnaps and I've started reading in a chair rather than on my mattress.  If I can set aside activities for shabbos each week, I can avoid social media twice a week.  This has gone well.  Removing this from the competition for my attention, or even transient but not very useful pleasure, has made it easier to substitute more purposeful alternatives such as reading or watching my Great Courses that promote other useful initiatives.  

Having altered my grocery shopping for a few months, I do not have a feeling of deprivation but have been pleased with the reading on the scale first thing every Monday morning.  Not having FB or Tw on the days divisible by four still has a sense of deprivation, not really FOMO but an activity I like to engage in even though not in my best interest.  Avoiding my mattress is a new initiative.  So far I don't miss it, though my sleep pattern has not yet responded favorably to the introduction of this difficult element of formal sleep hygiene.  

I don't yet have a good explanation for why Don't Do avoidances have been easier for me than Must Do tasks, but they are.  As long as they can be put to good advantage, that will be the preferred path to my personal upgrades.