I wrote a post some time ago called “Fifteen Minutes a Day Can Change Your Life.” This was a quotation from a former pastor, who may have gotten it from the book Success Is Not an Accident: Change Your Choices, Change Your Life by Tommy Newberry. (I just googled the phrase and this book came up—it looks good! I now have it checked out from that great library service Hoopla.) Anyway, the window of opportunity has now narrowed from 15 minutes to 5 seconds. Very efficient, no? I found out yesterday about this totally, insanely motivating woman named Mel Robbins through a rather circuitous route that started with my usual Thursday listening of the “Happier in Hollywood” podcast hosted by Sarah Fain and Liz Craft. They were interviewing someone who had interviewed Mel on her own podcast, so I went over and listened to that episode (language warning) and then watched Mel’s TED talk (access below) and a video or two or her on her own. Now I’m a Mel Robbins fan.
Here’s what she says, backed up with scientific study of the brain and verified by my own experience: when you get an idea about something you’d like to do, or you should do, you have five seconds to act on that impulse before, as Mel says, your brain puts on the brakes. So count to 5, or count down from 5, and act. (You don’t have to get up right then and start working on it, but you need to do something physical—write a note, make a call, ask a question, open a tab and type in a search term—something. I often ask myself, ‘What’s the smallest step you could take right now to get this project going?’) I don’t know how many times I’ve said to myself, “Okay, I’m going to go do X,” and I may have even taken a step toward that task. I have a clear memory, for example, of starting up the stairs to the piano to have a practice session. But then I didn’t follow through; I let myself get distracted. What I thought was, “Just let me do [other thing, probably useless] first.” And the practice session got derailed. When I’m writing something, whether it’s one of these posts or an essay for the Cherry Creek Chorale or even a chapter in a book, I constantly find myself wanting to do something else, to “take a break.” I don’t check Facebook and I don’t play computer games, but I do have a round of news sites that I visit obsessively, and I also have a set of podcasts that I listen to. So I’m going along, writing away, and I think, “I wonder what Jennifer Rubin has said lately?” (She writes the “Right Turn Blog” at The Washington Post, putting up several posts a day. Some people cannot stand her, but I read her all the time.) Since I access her articles so frequently, she shows up on the search thumbnails when I open a new tab in Chrome. Click on the thumbnail, and there she is. I read her latest. I see the list of top articles on the sidebar. I click on one of those and read that. Or perhaps I decide to check on one of the other news sites I follow. Now 15-20 minutes have gone by. Back to my own work! It takes me awhile to get going again. Maybe half an hour total gets eaten up by my one little JR bop.
So I have a hard time sticking to a task, and one tool I use sometimes (and I’m using it now) is the Tomato Timer, which is based on the Pomodoro Technique, a subject about which I’ve written before. My first 25 minutes is about over. There’s the buzzer! [Pause.] Okay, now I’m back from my five-minute break. I read one JR post and part of a book review. Sometimes the TT acts simply as a spur to keep me going past a distraction and when it buzzes I ignore it and keep on working. I don’t necessarily need those breaks at the end of each 25-minute session; I just need to reason to keep going on a piece of writing until I get so involved that I don’t want to stop.
Okay. Back to Mel. Her focus with the 5-second rule is on how we can get ourselves to start. But that little rule is by no means the only tool in her toolbox. It’s just the one that resonates that most with her audience. In fact, if you watch her TED talk linked to above (and I encourage you to do so), you’ll notice that she brings up the 5-second idea only briefly, at the very end. (She says that she was experiencing a major anxiety attack during that talk; I defy you to watch it and see that she’s anything but totally engaged and at ease up there on that stage.) She started getting tons of inquiries about this idea and realized that she needed to expand upon it more; thus the book.
Another big takeaway from her talk and her philosophy in general: There’s stuff you have to do that you don’t want to do, so just do it. (That’s my version.) With this idea she’s very much in the same wheelhouse (a new fave word of mine) as A Slob Comes Clean’s Dana K. White, who is a totally different personality type. I always want to wait until I feel like doing something before I do it, which is, like, totally fatal. No wonder it took me several years to write my book about the lyrics of Carmina Burana! Once I finally got going on it (and I don’t really know what gave me the final push), I loved it. I’d work on it whenever I had the chance. And now it’s finished, and I’m working on marketing it. Yet another challenge!
The 5-Second Rule isn’t going to change your life or solve all of your problems, but it’s a nifty little jab in the ribs. Go on, try it!