How many times have you had a great idea but never acted on it because of procrastination? Or postpone taking action for a personal or professional purpose? Think what would happen if you acted on each of those ideas. How would your personal and professional life change?
We all struggle with something, whether it's sharing an idea or taking action for a new fitness goal. But why do we keep putting it off when it makes us feel defeated?
Many people have problems with procrastination. Goals and dreams are often delayed until the last minute or not done at all. Mel Robbins, a life coach in the US, became famous for her remedy for procrastination: the 5-second rule.
Mel Robbins' book The 5 Second Rule argues that much of what is holding you back in life comes from those few precious moments between when you have an idea and when your brain comes up with a way to respond to that idea.
What is the 5 second procrastination rule?
Writer Mel Robbins claims that you have five seconds to act on your ideas before you risk subconsciously convincing yourself not to. Stay alert to those decisive moments. Each time, consider the benefits and obligations of doing versus procrastinating.
“The 5-second rule is simple. If you have an instinct to achieve a goal, you have to act on it within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it. Hesitation is the kiss of death. You may only hesitate for a nanosecond, but that's all it takes. That one little hesitation activates a mental system designed to stop you. And it happens in less than - you guessed it - five seconds. ”
If you adopt a do-it-now mentality, you won't have to be as uncomfortable as possible:
"There is one thing that is guaranteed to increase your sense of control over your life: a tendency to take action."
There is some wisdom here: don't wait for motivation, high energy, or a sense of focus before taking action. Create motivation by taking action. Once started, the action tends to pick up momentum - tasks just get easier to keep up with!
How is it possible that we know how to trick our brain in this way with a trick? Ben Tiggelaar in the media says about this:
“An important quality of human motivation is ambivalence. We want to get started on a job, but also take a break. We want to go to bed, but also watch Netflix. (…) By counting down out loud to zero and taking action, you distract yourself from potentially undermining thoughts and feelings. ”
The key to the 5 second rule is to understand that an impulse - the impulse to get something done - lasts only about five seconds. If you manage to keep an impulse away for longer than five seconds, it can lead to you putting it away for good and taking more and more action, feeling goals and achieved desired results.
Know more about the 5-second rule
Recommendation: You probably don't need 240 pages of testimonials and happy page fillers to apply the 5 second rule. So skip reading the book “The 5 second rule” by Mel Robbins for the time being.
Check her out instead TED talk:
Robbins' solution to procrastination is the '5, 4, 3, 2, 1 do it' method.
She simply suggests that the best way to overcome procrastination is to count backwards from five and then just do whatever you need to do. She also shrugs scientific evidence to substantiate its claims.
Sources including LinkedIN (link), Maartial (link), MarketingSquad (link), RightAttitudes (link), TedX (link)
