Do It For Five Minutes

I had a productivity phase. It's something I don't particularly enjoy looking back on, even outside of the putrid slime that is capitalism's influence on it all. The "productivity porn" of sharing feel good advice in a manner that still leaves you craving more advice and "hacks" leaves a rotten taste in my mouth these days.

Despite all that. there remain a few vestiges of that period in my life today. A silly-sounding example is that I use Todoist to balance progress through the shows and web series I'm watching. But there's one piece of advice that, no matter how much I wish otherwise, constantly echoes in my mind simply because of how correct it is.

Do it for just five minutes.

It's exactly the kind of productivity advice I look back on with disgust now. It's snappy, simple, you can do it right now and "trick" yourself into feeling good in the moment.

And it fucking works.

Now, let's make one thing clear: I usually am not using that rule for "productive" purposes. It's to combat a different problem. It's very easy for me to go quite a while without "making progress" in a hobby. Games are the worst offenders. My playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 is approaching its first birthday and any lack of progress is simply due to me not playing it consistently.

It's so easy to say I'm not able to give something the energy it deserves and default to doing something mindless. But as I find social media less and less enjoyable and my cravings for more fulfilling hobbies grow, sometimes I just need to do something that needs a bit more energy, even if it's just for 5 minutes.