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This is less about the length of the task and more to do with simply identifying the first step to take. You can see that by the example of starting to run by putting on your running shoes.
Advice like this frames procrastination as laziness that can be overcome by committing to less work, but that's misleading. If this helps you stop procrastinating I think it's much more likely that you're simply overwhelmed with choices.
Try listing out the things you want to do, and for each of those things list out just the first step, even if it's more than 2 minutes long. No more than that, don't start writing down instructions for yourself, just stick to "what do I do next here?"
You might find out that your problem isn't laziness, it's unharnessed motivation that's just pulling you in too many directions at once.
I don't think "the 2-minute rule" (originally from Dave Allen of 'Getting Things Done') or the article above frame procrastination as "laziness."
It clearly about "Task Initiation" which is a problem related to "Executive Function". None of the related authors would ever frame it as being about "Laziness". That's like... the last thing Dave Allen would do.
Also "identifying the next action" (which is what you're suggesting) is also very much a Dave Allen technique. Dave Allen adds the 2-minute rule on top of that -- if it's 2 minutes or less, don't bother tracking it, just do it straight away... that way you won't pay the cost of tracking a whole extra item in your task management system.
I'm specifically talking about this article, which as far as I can tell does not credit or mention Dave Allen or 'Getting Things Done'.
In my reading, this paragraph in particular is where it sounds like a solution for laziness more than a solution for "identifying the next action":
> _The idea is to make it super easy to get started. Once you pass the starting point, which is arguably the hardest step, you start to gain momentum to keep doing the task itself_
I think you and I agree about the benefits of this approach, all I'm saying is that I don't want people to dismiss this advice because they think it's targeted at "lazy people".
Also the two minute rule you describe appears to be different than the two minute rule as described in the article.
It credits lifehack, who credit Dave Allen. Though the ideas/details have been twisted along the way, the “2 minute rule” is straight from Dave. All credits on it lead back there. It’s not a contentious idea, the guy’s still alive. It’s his idea.
The Lifehack article, by James Clear, is the source of the confusion. Clear takes Allen's Two-Minute Rule as the _first part_ of his own Two-Minute Rule, the second part of which is something like Allen's Next Actions. It's a mess. The article posted here rehashes the second part of Clear's rule, completely divorcing the name of the rule from its original context.
Yeh you’re right. But the other element he’s throwing in is Fogg’s Tiny Habits. So it’s those three combined, in such a way that he makes it his own, and as demonstrated here, achieves a bit of erasure along the way.
Also - that life hack article - he’s published that same stuff many many times before. It’s basically an extract from his book. He republishes it _every_ where. And it works, he takes ownership of the idea in people’s minds.
You described Dave Allen's 2 minute rule as immediately doing things that take under 2 minutes while determining what work needs to be done, instead of marking them as a task to be done later.
The article describes taking long and/or involved tasks and inventing an artificially limited 2 minute version of them that you can begin more easily.
That's very twisted along the way, and does not seem like Dave Allen's original idea. It seems like a conflation of two very different ideas of his that are meant to solve different problems.
I never said Dave Allen's idea was contentious. I never criticized 'Getting Things Done'. I highlighted a facet of the article that I believed people could easily misread and therefore reject as not applicable to their image of themselves.
Please read my posts without the assumption that I am criticizing Dave Allen or his work.
Yes, the name "2 minute rule" has been taken, and mixed up with a bunch of other ideas from the same place (and related places). That's why it's twisted.
> I never said Dave Allen's idea was contentious
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that you had. I meant, the idea that "the 2 minute rule" is effectively a Dave Allen trademark, is not contentious.
Sorry if I seem antagonistic, totally not my intention. I'm in Queensland sitting underneath a large storm at the moment. I do think we're on the same page re effective executive function techniques themselves. ;)
If you say "inertia" instead of "laziness", the sting is removed.
Internia is why it's hard to start working and easy to continue once started.
Sure, that's better wording, but I also don't think this method solves inertia because of the two minute restriction.
What this seems to do is remove inertia stemming from being overwhelmed with options by clarifying what actually needs to be done.
This sent me down a rabbit hole looking for the difference between inertia and momentum. Which showed me, above all, that the people who write dictionaries aren't qualified to write about terms from physics.
I also see that effort it takes to get started on a thing as similar to "excitation energy" in chemistry -- that discrete amount of energy, below which, the system will not change, and above which, bam! it all happens!
By understanding the "next action" you're lowering the "excitation energy" requirement. But that's not a great metaphor to use with the general public. This is why James Clear writes the books, and I just writes the comments.
I was just about to start on a project, but stopped to read this article instead. I'll start the project later, after I catch up on comments.
Start a project → delay for 2 minutes
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There's a quote about this rule (get started and the job will be easier to complete):
"What you can do, or dream you can, begin it,
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
Only engage, and then the mind grows heated,
Begin it, and the work will be completed!"
- Goethe
Actually by John Anster.
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/02/09/boldness/
Cunningham's Law[0] in action. :)
0.
https://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Cunningham%27s_Law
I have decided to use the HN favorite function for the first time today, and I used it on your post.
Thank you for this quote!
how do you favorite it?
Click on the timestamp for the comment. It will give you additional options not visible normally, including _favorite_.
OK, slightly off-topic rant: I have to say that timestamp is the weirdest UI element I've run across in a long time. Nothing about it gives any indication that it does anything useful. Want to link to just the thread started by a given comment? Click the _timestamp_. What? Why? Oh well. Want to favorite a comment? Click the _timestamp_. Um, OK. That's weird.
I would never think to do that and on mobile have accidentally hit it while trying to do other things and been thoroughly confused how I got there or what led me there. It seems like it would be reasonable to make each of its function into a specific link above each comment. I don't think it would make the UI too much more cluttered, personally.
OK, rant over.
As someone who originally joined more than 11 years ago, my general impression is "old timers" tend to like the arcane interface. It's part of what makes this forum brilliant.
This is a common pattern, many sites use timestamp as an anchor to the individual post. I'm guessing someone realized there wasn't anything interesting to make a timestamp link to, so you could have it do that, and save space on separate text to explicitly link to the post.
Timestamp has been the standard place to put a permalink to a post/comment on the Internet since before social media was a thing. Mainstream social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook use this technique too.
I agree completely and this is one thing HN does like most other sites with user contributions and it’s TERRIBLE.
You learn it once and it works forever everywhere.
Thats what I live by (apart from the last sentence, this somehow doesnt pan out)
If you consistently need to trick yourself into reading a page of a book there are probably deeper issues that won't be fixed by: "Eat more vegetables → Eat an apple".
Hip-shot hypothesis: The productivity literature audience is overwhelmingly intelligent people with untreated ADD & ADHD.
> Hip-shot hypothesis: The productivity literature audience is overwhelmingly intelligent people with untreated ADD & ADHD.
I'd add anxiety (GAD or things like that) to the list.
> If you consistently need to trick yourself
I disagree, it's possible to find hacks to change your own behavior and even how your body works, these hacks can then turn into habits and long-lasting behavior.
If you have big problems with productivity and procrastination then it's really worth seeing a specialist. You can't diagnose yourself over the internet.
Also, all the coping mechanisms you've built up over the years can easily mask the problem. We used to ask people "Can you dress yourself?" to assess if they have manual dexterity issues. The problem is, almost everyone says "Yes". The people with the dexterity issues simply wear loose clothing and never buy anything with buttons. They probably haven't even thought about it for years, it's just their normal.
Mental issues can be similar. I've you've got through to adulthood you likely have a huge range of tricks, some of which you don't even think about anymore, to help get you through the day.
Yet, this happens to be a strategy used in therapy for ADHD and related disorders of executive function.
However many deeper issues are, in part, dealt with by coming up with incremental coping strategies.
Hah, my therapist told me about the 2-minute rule right before suggesting I get tested for ADHD.
> Hip-shot hypothesis: The productivity literature audience is overwhelmingly intelligent people with untreated ADD & ADHD.
I see your point.
Then again, one of the problems for some of those are that they start way too many thing.
My grandma told me a similar rule she would use when working from home a few decades ago.
She was a patent translator, and when she did not feel like working, she drew a line on the patent where she felt like she would want to stop.
But never once did she ever actually stop at the line, she would always go past it, as the motivation would come while working.
This works wonders, and I first learnt about this approach in the Atomic Habits book [0]. I highly recommend it. I can list at least ten good daily habits that I have developed after reading the book, like doing 2 sets of pull-ups every morning, not forgetting to take vitamins, reviewing my Anki decks, reading books (a couple of minutes in bed, kindle), making the bed, so on.
[0] (Non affiliated link)
https://www.amazon.com.br/Atomic-Habits-Proven-Build-Break/d...
EDIT: just realized that the jamesclear.com link that the article links to is the book's author, lol.
This is a good summary:
https://old.reddit.com/r/getdisciplined/comments/alqpx4/advi...
A question that sometimes unlocks a task for me, when I can remember is:
what’s the smallest possible thing I can do to move this in the right direction?
And somehow, thinking about the thing in those terms helps me go “OK well I’ve been putting off this bug that was reported because it touches a system I don’t understand well, BUT let’s start by just reproducing the bug.”
And at any point, really, you can either stop, or find the smallest possible thing that moves the task in the right direction.
Problem with me sometimes is (in the context of your example) reproducing the bug is such a hassle and so boring that I don't want to do that even.
A beautiful breakdown of this idea is in ' One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way' by Robert Maurer.
What Maurer does, however, is explain the biological reasons this works. When we are stressed/anxious/afraid, the part of the brain called the _amygdala_ activates our "fight or flight" response. So, when we try to take 'big' steps, we activate the amygdala and...give up, run away, avoid. But (extremely) small steps "sneak" past the amygdala without activating the fight or flight response.
"Eat more vegetables → Eat an apple" I lol'd
This can also be useful for habit formation.
For example, in the book "One Small Step," the author tells the story of a client he told to _stand_ on her treadmill every day.
She was _not_ to even turn it on. Only to stand on it. After a week of that, then she could turn it on. Bit by bit, she built the habit.
This is similar to how I approach things on my todo list as well. If the task is going to take less than five minutes just do it now and be done with it.
For further reading, this article is based (with credit) on James Clear's original, which uses techniques based on GTD and Fogg's Tiny Habits (which themselves are all probably
just formalised folk wisdom), which have been discussed many times here fwiw.
2 Minute Rule
https://jamesclear.com/how-to-stop-procrastinating
GTD
https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done
Tiny Habits
https://www.success.com/tiny-habits/
Fogg’s stuff is pretty well researched and rises a few steps up from formalised folk research (though I get what you mean).
I don’t think James does enough to credit Fogg. I mean Atomic Habits — based on Tiny Habits... and the name “two minute rule” lifted and shifted from GTD. He’s a good writer and deserves his success on that basis, but I get a bad impression from these few examples I know of.
Yes, I noticed that as well, the lack of credit but I wasn't sure if I just hadn't seen enough of the site.
This is good advice. But it conflates two different (but related) ideas from Dave Allen: "Next Action" and "2 minute rule".
Both are fantastic ideas. I recommend going to the source to learn about these, the book "Getting Things Done" and the many writings specific to that system. It is very influential, so much so, that many of the things influenced by it no longer realisz their ideas have come from Dave Allen. It just seems like a universal idea that everyone knows with no particular source, like the Cerulean of the sweater in "The Devil Wears Prada", it came from _somewhere_.
Another good way to get through the mental lock is to tell yourself your going to intentionally do a bad job.
Finding it har to start up writing that article because you can’t quite find an angle or conjoint up motivation? Just write a really bad version first. That gets you going and builds momentum, and then only on your second version try to improve quality.
The equivalent of “I’m going to put my running shoes on and walk around the block”. It puts you in the situation without worrying about performance.
Sometimes the 2 minutes can very quickly take something off your "to do" list. Read the first page of a book, realize you have no interest in it, and done: You can stop feeling guilty for putting it off.
On the other hand, sometimes the "small step" backfires on me, psychologically: I eat the apple as the small step to eating healthier. Then, later in the day, I feel good about myself for eating healthier and decide to have a few cookies as a reward.
Nice. I have a little technique called TTL(Time to live). I just do a little analysis before giving upon something which wanted to do.
I say about it in a short post here
https://bobbydreamer.com/39-running
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
A two minute push-up would be fuckin brutal.
Don't do two minutes of pushups, do _2_ pushups. The effect is the same. It gets you to start.
This also works for distractions. I plan to only watch 5 mins of a series and then end up watching the whole season.
This is a great strategy, and I've used it successfully to tackle many things like sink of dishes (do one piece whenever I'm in the vicinity) and programming (I'm going to do at least one commit per day on my project.)
I think the biggest benefit has been applying it to meditation. I've been told by several teachers that the process of entering meditation is what you initially want to practice the most, because the rest of your practice relies on being able to do that.
I set different "reminders" for myself to meditate. In the beginning I used "being annoyed" and "waiting for something" as two "triggers" for me to begin meditating immediately, and do it for at least 10 breaths.
This method is great. I use it all the time. But one of these does not feel like the others... (_cough_ "Build a program → Code a function" _cough_).
All the others could be done in the day, except for the vegetable one which is too abstract. And their solution could be done in 2 minutes. The coding one on the other hand... impossible to do in a day and also writing code is imo almost impossible to write in small chunks of time. Brainstorming a feature,thinking about a problem for 2 minutes, deleting/cleaning code, or even just opening your IDE and checking where you're at and planning the next step, sure. But actual coding, would not recommend. I require at least 30m+, preferably 60m+ to get anything reasonable done.
I used to code on the bus while commuting to work. There were many interruptions that meant it would only be successful if I optimised it such that I could start/stop at a moment’s notice. Through this experience I learned that you definitely can do highly productive programming work in tiny burts.
Patterns like these were helpful to getting there:
- “do the simplest thing that could possibly work”
- yagni
- shorten the code-compile-test loop
- don’t put up with slow tools
And others made it super super efficient.
Being interrupted (and especially by the type of interruptions on a bus, like what's the worse interruption? getting asked to move?) or working in bursts is not the same as doing 2 minutes of work then stopping.
The reason I'm nitpicking this example is because I've found it helps substantially to know that even if I only do 2 minutes of the thing, I'm making progress. Otherwise it's very hard to trick my brain into doing the thing. I don't like the "wear running shoes" example either. I have found that when I plan habits like that I maybe do them once or twice, then never again. There is no reward for me without the progress and in the case of the coding example would only bring me frustration.
A crowded public bus has far more intense interruptions than those in the workplace. I've never been thrown from my seat at work. (Ok -- once.) At work I've never been surrounded by a group of strangers having a shouting argument. And much more.
And there were many bus trips where I would not get a seat until the very end of the ride, and still manage to get work done. A single burst of work was frustrating, but you'd make the most of it. Honestly - it was a transformative experience. I completely agree with you here:
> it helps substantially to know that even if I only do 2 minutes of the thing, I'm making progress.
...and that was the trick for me. Transforming it from "in 2 minutes I won't even get the IDE loaded" to a situation where "in 2 minutes I'll make small but genuine progress, progress that I can _bank_. A tiny but solid win." And seeing that happen over and over is what got my brain into a place where I would be kind of "proud" instead of "frustrated".
With this topic in general, when you say:
> I don't like the "wear running shoes" example either
...I think maybe you'd need to go back to the real source of this stuff, which is not the linked article, and not James Clear, but Fogg. Also the book 'the power of habit' by Duhigg is quite in depth.
Because if you only read the 1-minute pop-psychology versions it's very easy to pick holes in it and it looks quite superficial, I get that. They present it as just little "hacks" and how can you get a deep trust in it, if it's just gimmicky little hacks?
Anyway, best wishes.
Run 10 miles → Wear my running shoes
I found that getting changed into running gear immediately I got home from work or got up really helped when I started running. Even if I went running perhaps 1/3 of the time.
I'm not sure how well this will work for certain things, like pushups: Each one gets harder as you go.
For things like work projects, this is a good approach for me: Sometimes I find myself putting off beginning something because it's a big project and I don't have it all figured out yet. But once I catch myself in that cycle, I start on the preliminary work, get into a groove, and (unlike the pushups) things get easier as I go.
That said, I did just interrupt a (relatively small) project to come here and see what's going on today.
Don't do two minutes of pushups, do _2_ pushups.
BJ Fogg takes this further with his "Tiny Habits" method:
.
He adds in the idea of environment triggers (e.g. you go pee) and doing the smallest part of the habit that you can cope immediately after the trigger (e.g. do one pushup).
This unfortunately has never worked for me. If I set out to just get started on something I don't really want to do, I will quit soon after; I've gotta fully commit to it from the start, can't play tricks on my brain. :(
Of course, if it's something I want to do but know I shouldn't, like eat a snack or watch TV for "just a couple minutes", then it works fine!
In my journey of ADHD I refer to this as my personal order of operations. If I can unblock opening the door to some new positive path, I can do wonders. I just have to get myself to open that door.
For my next anniversary my wife would suggest a Michelin star restaurant and my 2 min version can be McDonalds.
A version of this is in the book Loserthink by Scott Adams
This should probably be a book.