{"id":2864,"date":"2013-05-21T03:00:14","date_gmt":"2013-05-21T07:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/?p=2864"},"modified":"2014-02-09T15:06:58","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T20:06:58","slug":"five-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/2013\/05\/21\/five-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Five minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s all.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Got a goal you’re having trouble achieving?<\/p>\n

See if a timer will help you.<\/p>\n

Procrastination.<\/p>\n

It’s hard work to write a novel, keep a house clean, make a painting. We don’t like to get started because it commits us to a long process. But most of us can face five minutes of anything.<\/p>\n

So, start small.<\/p>\n

Write for five minutes.\u00a0 Dust for five minutes.\u00a0 Paint for…well, ok, painting might need larger chunks of time.\u00a0 There’s a lot of prep and a lot of clean-up.\u00a0 But the principle is the same.<\/p>\n

If you set a timer, you have an exit strategy.\u00a0 You can begin already knowing that you don’t have to continue for the rest of your life.\u00a0 No matter how horrible the task becomes, there is an end point.<\/p>\n

I love timers.<\/p>\n

Quite often, when they go off, I am interested and immersed in what I am doing, and I continue on beyond the beep, beep, beep<\/em>.\u00a0 But I don’t have<\/em> to, and that can make all the difference between getting started on something or spending another half day on Facebook.\u00a0 (Now, there’s another use for a timer.\u00a0 Use it to limit those time-wasting activities!)<\/p>\n

It doesn’t really matter what interval you use in setting the timer.\u00a0 If you can face thirty minutes of housework, go for it.\u00a0 The point is just to go into any task for which you are experiencing reluctance with an escape hatch.<\/p>\n

Maybe, when the timer goes off, you’ll want to continue.\u00a0 Maybe not.\u00a0 Either way, you’re some number of minutes closer to your goal.<\/p>\n

You can get timers in any dollar store, Radio Shack, grocery store.\u00a0 It’s nice to have several actual physical timers that you can keep in strategic areas of the house and move around as necessary.<\/p>\n

Until you lay in a supply, however, you can use this one:<\/p>\n

E.ggtimer.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Go ahead.<\/p>\n

Start that novel.<\/p>\n

Just five minutes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s all. Got a goal you’re having trouble achieving? See if a timer will help you. Procrastination. It’s hard work to write a novel, keep a house clean, make a painting. We don’t like to get started because it commits us to a long process. But most of us can face five minutes of anything. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197,84],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-2864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-productivity","category-life-in-general","tag-tuesday-tips"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2864"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3042,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2864\/revisions\/3042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}