This is how 5 minutes of a day can change you!!
Each of us always wants to learn or develop a new habit. Be it going to the gym, working out, reading books, playing the guitar, running every day, eating in control, spending less money or waking early. We try to make that change in our lifestyle but eventually fail and repeat the same all over again.
Sleeping at 3 am, let’s start sleeping at 10 pm now everyday. Eating 5 chapatis at a time, alright I'll eat only 2 now. No workout at all, alright let’s join a gym and workout 3 hours a day and get six-packs. Let’s buy a guitar and watch that 5-hour youtube video and learn to play like that guy from the reels.
We trust ourselves to force us to work for it, and somehow imagine that it’ll work out. But after a brutal week/s of self-torture and mental breakdown, we come back to the same old ways of life.
What the heck is happening here!!
I like to call this phenomenon overload. You are taking way more on yourself than you can handle or incorporate into your life for the long term.
For example, you want to work out in the gym. One fine day you are free of stress and full of motivation, and decide to go to the gym. Finally, you are taking the first step to your salvation. The trainer hands you a list of exercises you need to do. It's a lot and gonna take around 2 hours every day.
With all the energy and willpower, you start on Monday. It goes great, you do all the reps of all the exercises. Tuesday comes you are a bit tired but you nail all the exercises again. You are a bit exhausted now but somehow makes it through brutal workout of Wednesday as well. You think now I deserve some break and decide to take Thursday off.
Somehow that Thusrday extends to Friday, then Saturday and before you know it, it's Monday again, and the SAME SHIT REPEATS UNTILL YOU DECIDE : FUCK IT, I’M NOT GONNA DO IT.
How to break out of this loop ??????
You might have guessed 5 minutes. That’s right 5 minutes is all you need. To build any habit you have to start small, and 5 minutes is a very sweet spot. We think so highly of ourselves that doing something for 5 small minutes seems menial. We want to do something big and show the world.
I’m strong, I can run on that treadmill for 10kms. I can lift those 10kg dumbells. I can eat 2 chapatis a day and handle myself just fine, read this whole book in one go.
Yes, you can do all those because you are strong. Noone’s denying that but the real question is can you do that every day?
Can you keep running 10kms every day? Can you start lifting 10kgs from day one? Can you reduce your food intake by 50% and keep it that way. Can you read one book every day?
That’s rhetorical, cause no one can. That’s where 5 minutes rule comes from. It says you just need to spend 5 minutes doing whatever you want to do and then stop if you want. I would add on to it and say stop for sure. Don’t extend it, do it only for 5 minutes for at least a week.
That does 2 things, first it makes the tasks easy to do and secondly the tasks become easy to keep doing. With each passing week, you can add 5 more minutes to the timer.
I applied this trick to my life. For a long time, I wanted to read books consistently. But used to pick something, read like 1–2 hours, threw the book and, you guessed it right never picked it up again. Now when using this technique, the first thing that I did after waking up was read for 5 minutes. I did this for 2 weeks and then increased it by 5 more minutes, then each week kept it increasing by 5 minutes until I started reading 30 minutes every day.
By doing this I read 7 books in the last 5 months, it's not a lot but hey it's better than 1 book in 4 years right?
So now whatever you wanna do, pick a time slot and do it for 5 minutes only. With these 5 minutes conqure your life.
“Getting 1 percent better every day counts for a lot in the long-run.” : James Clear, Atomic Habits
Cheers :)
