Five Minute Room Rescue

I have to admit it, I procrastinate on pretty much everything. Or at least, I used to, until I found a method to stop procrastinating, or at least reduce it. I read about it in Fast Company magazine. You can read the article here, or you can just let me paraphrase it for you. It's called the Five Minute Room Rescue. It is initially recommend for when you have a room you want to clean. You set your timer for five minutes and clean as much as you can in five minutes. That's it, just five minutes and you're done. But what you'll be amazed at is how much you can get accomplished in that five minutes. Then, you'll want to continue until you finish the room.

This same concept can be applied to anything, even school work. You have an assignment due soon and you don't want to get started on it. Just do it for five minutes. You'll then realize that it perhaps isn't as hard as you thought and keep working on it. Maybe you won't finish it, but you'll get a great jump on it so that when you go to work on it again you'll have an easier time. The hardest part is just doing that first five minutes, but if you can just convince yourself that all you have to do is five minutes of work, you'll find it a lot easier.

So the next time you want to put something off, just convince yourself to give it five minutes. You'll be surprised how well it works.