The First Five Minutes

A big task is frightening for more than its size. It requires moving from a state where nothing is happening into a state of work. That transition is often more unpleasant than the work itself.

Peter Gollwitzer studied the gap between intention and action and proposed “implementation intentions”: link a specific situation to a specific step in advance. Not “I will study more,” but “when I put my cup in the sink after dinner on Tuesday, I will open the file and spend ten minutes on the first section.”

Such a formula does not create motivation out of thin air. It reduces the number of decisions at the moment of starting. A person no longer has to argue with himself about whether tonight is a suitable evening and whether he is inspired enough. The situation becomes a start button for a small action chosen beforehand.

So it helps to begin not with a promise to finish everything, but with an action that is hard to refuse:

• open the document;
• write the title;
• read the first page;
• lay out the tools;
• make one call;
• work for five minutes.

Five minutes will not solve a big task. They solve a different one: they remove immobility.

Once work has started it becomes concrete. Instead of an abstract “I have to write the report,” there is a table, a disputed paragraph and two missing numbers. Concrete obstacles are easier to deal with than a foggy sense of an enormous undertaking.

Sometimes after five minutes it is worth continuing. Sometimes it becomes clear that right now the data, the energy or the time are missing. That is a result too. The task stops being an unknown monster and turns into a list of conditions.

The method of small beginnings should not be turned into a cult of microscopic achievements. You can spend years “doing at least a little” without ever reaching the volume that actually changes the result. The first step is valuable because a second one is supposed to follow. But demanding the whole road from yourself at once is a reliable way to stay at the entrance.

This is easy to see with any form that gets put off for weeks. As long as the document is unopened, it exists as “sort out the taxes” — an object without dimensions. Four minutes after opening it, it turns out that of eleven fields seven fill in automatically, three are obvious, and one requires a contract number that has to be requested. The task has not become more pleasant. It has become a list with one item on it.

The side effect is more honest than the promise: sometimes five minutes show that the task really is big and needs a whole day. Immobility disappears not because things got easier, but because there is now something to plan.