How five minutes a day can change your life
How much does 5 minutes a day affect you?
Show key points
- Even just five minutes a day can lead to meaningful progress and eventually life-changing results if used consistently.
- Resistance to starting something new often stems from overthinking and internal excuses, making the initial five minutes feel harder than they are.
- Small actions like learning a word, drawing a single line, or signing up for something can be completed in minutes and contribute to long-term habit formation.
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- Over time, these small steps can become automatic routines that integrate seamlessly into your daily lifestyle.
- Taking consistent action, no matter how minor, propels you forward, while inaction keeps you stuck in the same place.
- The best way to overcome hesitation is to maintain momentum and avoid giving yourself the chance to reconsider or delay.
- Clearly understanding why a goal matters to you personally can provide the motivation needed to consistently invest your five minutes each day.
After all, when you do a social media brief, it could easily have been half an hour while you were still browsing. While on the couch after a long tiring day, you will feel that 5 minutes will be too short to relax. When you're busy with your work or an interesting book, you'll have easily passed 5 minutes.
However, there are many things that can also happen in 5 minutes. It can change a person's life. It seems longer than usual when you rush time. It's certainly even more valuable when you spend that time with someone you care about or when you're doing something that interests you.
5 minutes a day may help you achieve your goal and change your life.
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If you're thinking of starting something but feel it's hard to start it, whether it's learning a new language, starting drawing, or even your new job.
Start with 5 minutes a day.
There may not be much we can do in just 5 minutes a day, but it doesn't have to be a huge task.
In fact, the act can be so small that it is very easy to do and feel silly when not to do it.
A new word a day takes less than three minutes to read and understand.
A paintbrush stroke takes less than a second.
Registering for a new website takes less than five minutes.
Over a period of time, you'll have grouped and anchored many small tasks so that they are grouped together in a milestone image.
The key word is to break the resistance and take actions
It's easy to think we can spend 5 minutes a day, until we actually try to do it.
It is possible to easily waste 30 minutes before starting the five minutes in an attempt to make the environment and emotions suitable to start.
If you're someone trying to make some changes in your life, you may find yourself facing more resistance than ever before. When you want to get started, there will always be distractions, as well as internal excuses and justifications. It happens because taking the first step is always difficult.
And also because it is difficult to break the momentum of not taking the necessary actions.
Just like someone who wants to start running after a long pause or for the first time, there is the temptation to rest and do nothing. Sitting on the couch while watching interesting TV shows is very comfortable compared to having to do something else. Examples include leaving the couch, putting on shoes, going out the door, reaching the training yard and sweating during hard work)
However, you may realize that once you take the first small step, the second step and the next steps will become more manageable and easier with time and practice. When these actions are practiced long enough, they will become long-term habits.
How to break resistance
One way to break resistance is not to allow yourself to stop and think or make a decision. Keep the work flowing and don't allow yourself to slow down to think about whether to do or not. For example, if you start running again, you can choose to head straight to the gym after school or work rather than home. You can choose to change your running clothes the moment you get home and head straight outside after changing your clothes, thus, avoid sitting or also give yourself a chance to say no to what you decided to do. The constant flow of work allows you to move from one step to another without having to make a decision or delve into any thought process that may jeopardize your progress.
Instead of sitting down and thinking about how big and impossible it is to accomplish a task, why not start working and get something out of those five minutes to take action every day?
Business equals progress. Without business and progress, you're not going anywhere; you'll stay where you are when you look back. If you have a goal and really want to achieve results, take action. No matter how small your business is, it will still push you forward towards your goal and away from where you are now.
The more actions you take, the farther away you are from where you started.
Where can you find 5 minutes of your busy schedule?
If you're commuting by public transport to work, you can easily get several 5-minute sets instead of checking social media channels.
If you have a few minutes to spend before bedtime, it's easy to set aside 5 minutes before you fall asleep at night.
How about waking up five minutes earlier to do what you want?
We can easily get margins of 5 minutes in our lives, but what's most important is how far you want to do what you planned to do.
Most importantly, you should know why you want to achieve the goal you set.
If you find yourself still trying to put the start off, or you're severely unmotivated to do anything, your best idea might be to look for why you want to do the act in the first place.
Most often, when you're honest and clear about what you want, taking action is your second nature. Deep down, you know you want to, and you know you need to take action to get to where you want to be.
If the expectation is personal or from others to be at a certain level or achieve certain goals, it won't take long for resistance to seep back.
Unless it's the thing you want for yourself, no amount of reward or incentives can motivate you to take action. Understand why you want to achieve this goal or do certain things in life.
If you're clear about what you want to achieve, do your best to achieve it. Start at least with the small steps in the five minutes you've set aside each day. You must have faith and believe that you can achieve what you want to do.
As your experiences and expertise accumulate, you may find yourself dedicating more than 5 minutes of your time each day to make room for what you really love and enjoy.
It is generally not surprising to see actions turn into habits and are eventually integrated into an individual's lifestyle when done long enough.
Do you want to miss the opportunity to achieve something bigger and better for yourself because you didn't give yourself the five minutes that you can easily do without?
I'll assume not.
Actions you can take today
See where you can set aside 5 minutes of your time.
List the smallest actions you can take today and tomorrow.
Commit yourself that you will take this act during this day and take the next act the next day.
Set aside 5 minutes a day as an experiment during this week and see how this works for you.
