A quick look at the minutes mindset
2024-02-08
This time around I don't have a bigger topic that resonated with me during the week to write an article about, but I'm making good progress at recovering, so I want to share a small, but mighty mindset idea with you instead...
Everyone is familiar with these little 2 to 5 minute breaks during the day, which are mostly the result of arriving somewhere a little early or late, waiting for someone or just finishing a task quicker than expected, and also knows what they are mostly spent with - doing nothing, doomscrolling and all kinds of procrastination imaginable. Another popular phenomenon I personally fall for way to often is planning to start with a task at a certain time, then getting late by 5 minutes or so and ultimately procastinating until the next full hour, because the current one feels "half-eaten" - even though working for even just 30 minutes is better than delaying the work altogether.
The so-called minutes mindset tries to get rid of these nasty forms of procrastination by simply stating "Use every little gap that isn't clearly determined to be a break to get work done and let go of the requirement to follow fixed time blocks or complete tasks in full" . The idea is that within a minute or two you can on the one hand certainly get some small tasks (like reading an email, clearing your inbox or creating a calendar event) and on the other hand embracing to get started is really valuable (even when not doing much), since getting started is usually the hardest part of any work. Therefore we want to reduce the number of "starts" as much as possible and try to stay in the existing flow - getting back into a mental work setting is harder than staying in it.
Just to be clear, this idea isn't against breaks (personally I believe it to even back their existance), but it requires them to be intentional and have a clear distinction from work, so that they don't cheat their way into everyday work, never have a chance to fuel our media addiction and the like and ultimately don't end up eating more of our precious time than planned. With that said, feel free to share your thoughts on the topic in the comments down below and have a lovely day...