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🔎 Finding Focus #11 — Overcoming Inertia
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👋 Hey Friends, This morning I was reading Ali Abdaal’s Feel Good Productivity, and it resurfaced one of the most powerful productivity tips that I’ve come across, which is the Five-Minute Rule. This rule has gone by many names and iterations, and most of those seem to have origins back to David Allen. The Five-Minute Rule is the idea that if you just commit to doing something for five minutes, at the end of that time you’ll have momentum and can continue on that task for significantly longer than that original timer. I love this technique, and it helps me in times when I’m not feeling motivated or procrastination has set in. Reflecting back, I can’t think of a scenario where this technique hasn’t worked. ​ Historically, when thinking about this topic, I’ve always thought about it as building momentum, but I now think it can be better encapsulated by flipping the analogy and thinking of it as overcoming inertia. This is similar to the idea that an object at rest stays at rest, and an object in motion stays in motion, as is evidenced by Sir Isaac Newton’s studies of physics. ​ This goes way beyond tasks, though. Our life is full of inertia. Inertia that, in the moment, feels incredibly heavy to overcome. Due to this, it’s very easy to keep things the same. There are likely some things that you’ve been wanting to do, changes you’ve been wanting to make, but it’s much easier to leave things inert. ​ What decisions or quests do you want to get started on, but inertia is holding you in check? Let’s take two minutes and get the ball rolling. The easiest way I’ve found to get moving is to tell someone that you plan on doing something and establish when you will start. Feel free to reply to this email and tell me about it. I’d love to hear from you, and I promise I won’t judge. ​ I tried out a new format for this week’s newsletter. What did you think of it? Is it better than the older format, or would you like the old format back? Reply to this email and let me know. ​ Cheers, ​ Brandon Boswell |
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Subscribe to 🔎 Finding Focus, an email newsletter, where I share with you my reflections from the past week to give you one thought, tip and tool to improve your focus and creativity.
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