How to Get Stuff Done Using the 15 Minute Rule

We all know how difficult it can be working on certain tasks relating to our online business. Getting traffic can be one of those tasks – most people seem to hate it.

Even writing a blog post can take some motivation if you just aren’t in the mood and a project that takes a bit of work, like an ebook for instance, can often be put on the back burner, because you just never get around to working on it on a consistent basis.

So how do you find the motivation to work on stuff that you don’t really want to work on? Well, by applying the 15 Minute Rule you really don’t need the motivation and it’s so simple to do, plus this can work in any area of your life and not just for blogging.

What You Will Need

The only thing you will need for this is a timer of some sort. Something that after a certain period of time will let you know with a pop-up or an audible alarm that your time is up.

How to Use the 15 Minute Rule

Let’s say you start out the day with really good intentions to spend an hour working on your next blog post, but when you get started that certain feeling comes over you and you realize you just can’t be bothered or you don’t have any inspiration. You  just don’t have the motivation to get started and would rather check Facebook or read your emails than get into writing more content for your site. Sound familiar? I think pretty much all of us go through this sort of thinking at certain times with our online business.

BUT, rather than toss it all in and head off to Facebook, just say to yourself that at the very least you are going to spend 15 minutes on writing that blog post. You can handle 15 minutes right?…it’s nothing really. Fifteen minutes is about all the time it takes to make a cup of tea or coffee so why not spend it writing your post? So set the timer for 15 minutes and get to work.

What you will find, is that after the timer goes off, you are on a roll and will want to continue on. If so, that’s great! That’s the whole point of this method…so just keep going.

But let’s just say that you got to the end of the 15 minutes and you really just want to quit. Before you do, have another little chat with yourself and say that you are just going to add another 5 minutes – after all, it’s only 5 minutes and you can cope with that. So set the timer again and keep going.

After the 5 minutes is done, you might even add another 5 minutes or more if you find yourself suddenly in the zone and willing to keep going. If so great!…give yourself a big pat on the back. If you find you can’t go on then give yourself a big pat on the back anyway because you just did 20 minutes working on your blog post that you weren’t even intending on doing that day.

An Alternative to the 15 Minute Rule

Another similar way of getting stuff done is to use the chunking method. Chunking involves breaking down a big task into smaller chunks that are easily achievable. It makes the task seem less overwhelming and more doable.

Whilst writing one of our previous ebooks, although I quite enjoyed doing it, some days I just wasn’t in the mood to even get started with it. So I decided that I would set myself a minimum of one paragraph a day. One paragraph is easy isn’t it? However, what actually happened is that I couldn’t just write one paragraph so it would normally end up being a couple of pages. The fact that I knew that my minimum daily requirement for that ebook was to write one paragraph made it so much easier to get in and start each day.

This can work with any part of your business, whether it be backlinking, writing blog posts or working on a major project release. Chunking simplifies things to the point where everything seems doable.

It’s amazing how either of these methods work. Let us know in the comments below if they work for you, or if you have another method of getting work done.

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