The sixty minute rule

If it takes less than five minutes to do, do it right now.

Have you ever heard of this rule? Productivity experts have touted this philosophy for decades. The five minute rule is a potent defense against procrastination.

Tackle the task at the moment it’s defined and don’t delay. Take immediate action to short circuit your brain and break through the inertia to feel a greater sense of progress and accomplishment. Doesn’t matter if your task is urgent or important or mundane. Do it right now. It’s only five minutes.

There are one thousand four hundred and forty minutes in a day. Mathematically speaking, five minutes is equivalent to doing a ten thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, and taking thirty four pieces out.

In the grand scheme of things, that’s trivial. Whether it’s putting away dishes, changing a light bulb, making the bed, or sending an email, making a phone call, or taking out your dog to go potty, shirking our modest five minute commitments is inexcusable.

Love that rule. It’s made my life disproportionately more efficient and less stressed.

But what about larger tasks? Is there a comparable philosophy for medium sized tasks involving additional layers of time, effort and complexity?

I believe there is. I call it the one hour rule, and it applies to any moderately annoying task that requires the next level of focused and uninterrupted work, but can be executed in a timeframe of less than sixty minutes.

Examples might include applying for your employee identification number, moving to a new password manager, backing up your data, making a customer service phone call, resolving an issue with your rapid rewards account, buying your mother’s day cards, dissolving the corpses of your murder victims in concentrated sulphuric acid, and going to the hardware store to buy a faucet adaptor for the washing machine.

Mathematically speaking, these tasks will take roughly ten times as long as the five minute ones. We treat them as chores or mini projects, as they are an order of magnitude larger than a quick task.

And that’s where we get stuck. The perceived time commitment of one hour is seen as significant enough to create a mental obstacle and reluctance to engage in it.

One hour? Damn, that’s far more challenging than a short burst of time. We anticipate real difficulty in sustaining our attention.

Plus, there’s legitimate cultural baggage to contend with. The concept of a billable hour is commonly associated with professional services and their corresponding fees. This association creates a psychological barrier and negative perception around dedicating a full hour to almost any task, because people see it as an investment of valuable resources, or equivalent to a monetary cost.

Here’s a case study from my experience.

Our neighborhood was long overdue for a block party. The pandemic threw off our community events schedule, and social inertia got the better of us. And everyone was craving a get together, but nobody wanted to do anything about it.

Now selfishly, I really wanted the block party to happen, so I asked my neighbor about the process. Tom told me that eighty percent of the work is upfront labor. You simply have to get over the administrative hump, and the rest is details.

Once the city approves your block party, the momentum builds naturally. Neighbors start getting excited and come out of the woodwork to offer up their stoops for grilling food, playing music and setting up kiddie pools.

Here’s what you do, he said.

1. Send a text message to the two guys on the planning committee.
2. Suggest a few potential dates and agree on a first and second choice.
3. Fill out the required permit application forms, providing details such as the proposed date, time, location, and activities planned for the event.
4. Attach a letter of support from several homeowners, which you literally make up yourself with fake letterhead, to preserve the illusion of officialness.
5. Pay the twenty dollar fee and submit your completed permit applications to the appropriate authorities well in advance of the desired date of the block party.
6. Allow four weeks for processing and approval.
7. Then, once the government gives you the green light, everything else will fall into place.

It’s just checklist from there. Don’t worry if it’s not perfect, because everyone will be so happy and appreciative that someone finally threw a block party, no one will care. They’ll all be drunk and high anyway.

When my font of wisdom neighbor told me all of this, my response was, wait, that’s it? That’s the reason we haven’t thrown a block party in three years? Because nobody wants to pick a date and fill out the forms and compose the letter and pay the stupid fee?

Wow, it seems relatively straightforward. The order of operations is laid out right in front of me. Let’s not let something like a little administrative overhead be the one reason for our continued procrastination and avoidance.

Consensus is the absence of leadership, and somebody has to step up and move the ball forward. May as well be me.

After all, I know how group dynamics work. Social psychologists call it diffusion of responsibility, aka, social loafing. When a task is perceived as a collective effort, individuals feel less personally accountable and rely on others to take the lead. Everyone assumes someone will do something, resulting in no one doing anything.

Long story short, I executed all of the upfront work for the block party an hour. The effort and time investment of the process wasn’t as overwhelming or daunting as it was made out to be. Twenty minutes of communicating with the guys on the committee, twenty minutes of composing a letter, and twenty minutes of filling out the application.

I generated my own internal sense of urgency and completed a task that had been sitting in limbo for three years. A few months later, we threw a terrific block party, the whole community had a great day, and only one of our neighbors died from alcohol poisoning.

That’s a net win.

Behold, the sixty minute rule. Nobody else is going to do it, but they will love that you did it for them. All you have to do is get over the administrative hump of moderately annoying tasks by giving your next level of focused and uninterrupted work.

What medium sized project are you avoiding? What perceived time commitment do you see as significant enough to create mental obstacles and reluctance to engage in it?

If you live amidst a sea of inertia, it’s time to rise to the occasion. There are glimmers of hope in the seemingly insurmountable challenges that lay before you. Oftentimes, it’s simply a matter of intention and attention.

Now, I won’t be so naïve to say, it’s all in your head. There are very real psychological barriers and negative perceptions around dedicating a full hour to almost any task. Opportunity cost is a bitch. Sixty minutes is an investment of valuable resources and an equivalent to a monetary cost.

The secret is to think more long term about your work. Because once you accept that instant gratification is off the table, you’ll be astonished at the simplicity of it all.

Administrative overhead might suck in the moment, but it’s worth plowing throw the upfront muck to realize the joy on the other side.

What if one hour of focused labor proved that a task isn’t as overwhelming or daunting as it was made out to be?