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Most often, the one standing in between you and your goals is procrastination. That is your real enemy. And in spite of trying as hard as you can to fight it, the enemy still wins, 80% of the time. Well, at least for most people. In the interest of time and shorter attention span, we have curated a short blog to help you fight your greatest enemy- procrastination, time management and lack of productivity.
What could be done here is to follow simple rules that may have a change in your lifestyle, starting with a single day.
There are so many rules when it comes to increasing productivity and time management: the 2-minute rule, the 5-minute rule, the 5-second rule, and so on. However, in the next two minutes, we are going to take you through two different 2-minute rules that made me write better, study better, and focus on my art, all in a single day.
The problem that most people encounter with these rules is implementation, for sure. Since these rules were made for companies and bigger systems, it’s almost unlikely that there is a concrete plan out there to implement them in an individual’s life and schedule.
So, let me take you through what the rules say and how to incorporate them into your schedule.
2-Minute Rule To Take Care of Your Procrastination
The first 2-minute rule comes from Getting Things Done by David Allen. He says if you have a task that takes only 2 minutes, do it right now. For instance, if you want to take out the trash during the day, just do it right now. Here’s a list of things that might take 2 minutes of your day:
- Do the laundry
- Stretch
- Organize your desk
- Water the Plants
- Clip your nails
- Pay a bill
- Drink some water
We just do these when it comes to us. But instead, make it a point to do them right away by tuning your brain out of procrastination.
The second 2-minute rule comes from Atomic Habits by James Clear. He says that if there is a task that you don’t want to do, simplify the task into 2 minutes or less. For instance, doing an entire assignment breaks down into just reading the whole page. Or memorizing the entire periodic table comes down to memorizing only 10 of the elements.
How is this sustainable?
James Clear says, if you’re skeptical about the 2-minutes rule, just make sure you start and stick with me for a couple of weeks. For instance, I wanted to get into the habit of reading a research paper for an hour before dinner. What I did for that was limit myself to two minutes—I opened my laptop and studied for two minutes—and then went to do something else. It seemed unproductive at first, but staying consistent day after day meant that my brain was getting into the habit of studying and researching daily.
A habit needs to be established before it can be expanded on. Starting small is easier.
All in all, understanding your schedule and making sure you incorporate a new routine will help you achieve more of your goals than ever. What we recommend is to change one tiny part of your day at a time, be it as limited as 2 minutes. Trust us, this will help you increase your productivity multiplefold in the long run. Also, we have put down a list of ten learning techniques that will help you learn better and thereby improve your focus, time management and productivity. You may want to give it a read if you’re struggling with procrastination while learning a new subject.
