you’re trying to fool yourself. Nobody is actually aspiring to read one page
or do one push-up or open their notes. And if you know it’s a mental trick,
why would you fall for it?
If the
Two-Minute Rule feels forced, try this: do it for two minutes and
then stop. Go for a run, but you
must stop after two minutes. Start
meditating, but you
must stop after two minutes. Study Arabic, but you
must stop after two minutes. It’s not a strategy for starting, it’s the whole
thing.
Your habit can only last one hundred and twenty seconds.
One of my readers used this strategy to lose over one hundred pounds. In
the beginning, he went to the gym each day, but he told himself he wasn’t
allowed to stay for more than five minutes. He would go to the gym,
exercise for five minutes, and leave as soon as his time was up. After a few
weeks, he looked around and thought, “Well, I’m always coming here
anyway. I might as well start staying a little longer.”
A few years later, the
weight was gone.
Journaling provides another example. Nearly everyone can benefit from
getting their thoughts out of their head and onto paper, but most people give
up after a few days or avoid it entirely because journaling feels like a
chore.
*
The secret is to always stay below the point where it feels like
work. Greg McKeown, a leadership consultant from the United Kingdom,
built a daily journaling
habit by specifically writing less than he felt like.
He always stopped journaling before it seemed like a hassle. Ernest
Hemingway believed in similar advice for any kind of writing. “The best
way is to always stop when you are going good,” he said.
Strategies like this work for another reason, too: they reinforce the
identity you want to build. If you show up at the gym five days in a row—
even if it’s just for two minutes—you are casting votes for your new
identity. You’re not worried about getting in shape. You’re focused on
becoming the type of person who doesn’t miss workouts. You’re taking the
smallest action that confirms the type of person you want to be.
We rarely think about change this way because everyone is consumed by
the end goal. But one push-up is better than not exercising.
One minute of
guitar practice is better than none at all. One minute of reading is better than
never picking up a book. It’s better to do less than you hoped than to do
nothing at all.
At some point, once you’ve established the habit and you’re showing up
each day, you can combine the Two-Minute Rule with a technique we call
habit shaping to scale your habit back up toward your ultimate goal. Start
by mastering the first two minutes of the smallest version of the behavior.
Then, advance to an intermediate step and repeat the process—focusing on
just the first two minutes and mastering that stage before moving on to the
next level. Eventually, you’ll end up with
the habit you had originally
hoped to build while still keeping your focus where it should be: on the first
two minutes of the behavior.
