The Two-Minute Start
When to use it: When there’s a task you keep sliding away from. The email you’ve reopened four times. The report you’ll “do after lunch” for the third lunch running. When you’ve been at your desk for an hour and produced nothing because the thing in front of you feels too big to pick up.
Why it’s here: Dread is mostly about the size of the thing, and the size is mostly imaginary — your brain has bundled the whole task into one heavy lump and is refusing to lift it. You don’t have a motivation problem; you have a starting problem. Motivation tends to show up after you begin, not before. So you cheat: you make the first step so small that there’s nothing left to dread, and you let momentum do the rest.
Do this:
- Name the thing you’re avoiding, out loud or on paper.
- Now find the smallest first move that counts as starting. Not “write the report” — open the document and type the title. Not “reply to the email” — write the first sentence, badly.
- Set a timer for two minutes. Do only that one tiny move. You’re allowed to stop when it goes off.
- When it goes off, check: do you want to keep going? Usually you do, because the hard part is behind you. If you genuinely don’t, you’ve still moved — that counts.
The rule that makes it work: you are only committing to the two minutes. No bigger promise. The momentum is a bonus, not the deal.
If even the two-minute version feels heavy, make it smaller. There’s no first step too small to be allowed.