The Two Minute Technique

The 2 Minute Technique

I won’t pretend to have invented this technique, but I will say that it’s a life-changer in terms of showing up / getting things done. It’s so simple yet so effective.

This is what it is:

We all have days when it’s just not happening. When there’s a job that we’d far rather put off. Or indeed days when we’d rather put off every job.

Perhaps you have days where you do simply put off every job? I?know I have – too many. Those days when freedom is it’s own worst enemy!

So I came across the 2 minute technique in a book by one of my (web design) clients, the Olympic Gold Medallist Ben Hunter-Davis. This may not be exactly the way Ben sets it out as I haven’t been back to check, but the gist of it is this:

For each task, on those rubbish days, try and break the task down into parts. Find a part that will only take you a couple of minutes and do that.

For instance, if you’re supposed to go out for a run but you don’t feel like it, the task could be simply to put your running gear on. That’s all – don’t think beyond that, just get that done.

Or if you’ve got an article to write (like this one!), the task could be to open Word and create a new file with the new article name.

You’ll almost certainly end up doing a lot more than the two minutes once you’ve started (like this one!). Because it’s the starting that’s usually the problem.

Once you’ve effectively told your subconscious that you’re up and running (like the first one! Sorry I’ll stop doing that now…), you’ll usually find it harder to stop than to continue.

The trick is to only focus on that two-minute task. Whenever you’re faced with seemingly overwhelming tasks, breaking them down into smaller, bite-size pieces will always bring them back into proper proportion. You’ll realise the Wizard of Oz is just some normal bloke behind a screen.

Make that first bite-size chunk a way of getting started. See, I told you it was simple. But boy is it effective. My plan was just to open and save this file to write tomorrow, but now it’s done!