Wheezy Waiter's Ten Minute Rule ... AMPLIFIED

How to Stop Procrastinating With The 10 Minute Rule

I'm going to do an experiment on myself. 

It is currently March 31 as I write part 1 of this whole thing. But I am going to do this challenge for the next day, and update this post with another post. A post-post-post.

If I remember.🤷

So, if you can't or don't want to watch the video attached, Craig's rule goes like this:

If there is something you have been having a hard time habitualizing in your life, that means, a good habit probably (hopefully...? otherwise .. why?), then tell yourself you'll just do it for 10 minutes, and then you can stop. That supposedly should:

1. Take some pressure off

2. If you get in the zone, and then have to stop, then you'll probably crave more. 

He actually times himself doing the things and forces himself to stop.

I'm tweaking my version a little bit, because of the "Be Bea" rule, which is to adapt every advice to my own personality, guided by the self-awareness that I've been trying to develop keenly over the past decade or so. (I got this from Gretchen Ruben. Her rule is "Be Gretchen" obviously. Just like the concept, the name should change to yours! be! your! self!)

So here are my tweakies:

1. If the action is important for someone else (like deadlines for work) I will not stop myself after 10 minutes, and then reward myself after to replace the supposed "craving" that stopping should develop (here I'm applying the Reward aspect of habit formation according to James Clear). If the action is just for me, then I will stop.

2. This part is more crucial for me - the flip side! These days I am actually never bored. As an introvert, I enjoy time at home far too much and can find myself drawing, playing guitar, cleaning, cooking, eating, playing games, or watching videos, or reading the news, or watching videos about games, or listening to news playing in the background while playing, or eating while watching something, or reading something while listening to something (which I keep pausing because I keep missing things, obviously - I do these on autopilot so most of them are very dumb things to do) or playing a game while playing Info Videos about the same game in the background so I don't know if I'm actually being hit by Zombies or it's just the video in the background so I go on split-screen mode and the computer gets fried and spazzes out and lags just when an actual Zombie is around.

Wasn't that super aggravating to read? That's what my brain is like every day these days. So as I was SAYINGGGG, the second tweak is that when a craving for a net-negative* action arises, I will tell myself "I will do it AFTER ten minutes" and do something relatively more useful for ten minutes. (*net-negative because I don't feel like any of these enjoyable activities are inherently negative! They are just easy to do in excess~ which makes them ultimately nega)

3. I will not use a timer, because knowing myself, the hassle will prevent me from trying at all. I have a huge clock in my tiny apartment, and a clock on my screens. And two watches I can see. Dassit.

Now it will actually not be so easy to decipher if a craving is pushing me to do a negative action when it arises all the time, so it helps to list down which things I consider to be possibly damaging for the rest of the day:

1. Gaming
2. YouTube (unless it's for a particular specific purpose and not entertainment)
3. Snacks (unless I'm really actually hungry)
4. Scrolling through any social media feed.

I can replace them with positive or neutral tasks:

1. Cleaning
2. Drawing
3. Writing
4. Exercising
5. Anything Creative Really

So I will update you tomorrow! Ok Go