Think 15 minutes isn’t enough to get anything meaningful done? Think again. I was inspired to write this by Nicola Lutz of No Fluff who teaches sales techniques to international education institutions. She asks her clients to block out 15 minutes a day to make one good sales call. 15 minutes, that’s it. It got me thinking of the things I wanted to do and my excuses for not doing them. There is never enough time, even when curing crazy busyness is your business. I discovered that I could get far more done in 15 minutes than I first thought. Here’s how:
1. Use your phone timer. Set it for exactly 15 minutes. You are less likely to procrastinate when the clock is ticking.
2. Decide what matters most. What’s the most important thing you can do right now? Book the trip, make the call, draft the report, make the doctor’s appointment, prep a meal, learn something. Best of all just hide your phone, sit quietly and reflect. Spend your 15 minutes on just one thing.
3. Be kind to yourself. Aim low. You can’t fit in a full workout, but you can do a heck of a lot of squats, planks or vinyasas in 15 minutes if you want to. It can be tricky to find 90 minutes to do 10,000 steps, but a brisk 15 minute walk will make a dent in your target.
4. Compound it. It takes about a minute to read a page. If the average book is 400 pages, then just two x 15-minute chunks of reading a day will get you through a book in less than a fortnight. That’s 26 books a year. Five x 15-minute chats a week will go a long way to strengthening relationships, preventing problems from escalating, or whatever your goal is. And not everything has to have a goal, does it?
5. Give it a go. Those free three hours you dream of may never materialise, but 15 minutes? You have that now. Start small and start now. Do it for you.
Change how you think about time for good
Three minutes is all you need to watch my animation on lessons from Einstein to transform your relationship with time.