Boost Your Productivity in 5 Minutes with this Actor Hack

I don't know about you, but as the days get shorter and colder I am STRUGGLING with motivation. 

I look at my to-do list in the morning and the temptation to open a new browser and watch a YouTube video or two (or five) is great. 

I put off the thing I need to do, I berate myself for putting it off, make myself a cup of coffee, I check my Instagram, berate myself some more, and then before I know it it's noon. 

But here's the wild thing:

Once I'm doing the activity I'm supposed to be doing, it's not that hard. 

I rarely find myself ten minutes into a yoga class saying to myself, "Why am I doing this?! This is soooo haaaaaarrrrrd."

(Note: I don't do hot yoga. That could very well be a different story...)

But truth be told, I have this experience with 99% of the activities I put off doing.  

The activity itself isn't painful—Getting started is. 

That's where the five minute rule can help us!

Last week I did an experiment...

Whenever I found myself dreading a task, I set a timer for 5 min. 

Then I said to myself,

"Sara, you only have to [write this email/ play guitar/ workout/ update your audition journal] until this timer goes off. If you find you still don't want to do it after 5 minutes, you get to stop with zero guilt."

I gave myself full permission to quit after five minutes, with no judgement.

Can you guess how many times I quit?

ZERO. 

Yup. Because none of these activities took up that much energy.

Deciding to get started was the exhausting part. 

So, try it for yourself this week! Set a timer and give yourself a little push.

And speaking of a little push....

Some of you have been putting off revamping your audition book.

You know the songs in there aren't serving you, but you just can't get yourself to launch into that project.

Let's make this a little easier, shall we?

This week only, get 10% off all rep coaching purchases when you use coupon code "OVERWHELM" at checkout. 

(Psst! Click here to book that coaching!)

The timer's running... 

Let's get started. ;)

Sara Glancy is an NYC actor and the founder of Audition Rep Matchmaker, a service that helps match actors with the audition materials that will book them jobs.

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Photo by Jessica Osber.