Concept
The two-minute version
The two-minute version is James Clear's rule that a habit should be scaled down to a start that takes under two minutes (open the file and write one sentence; put on the running shoes), because beginning is the hardest part and every action after the first is easier than the first.
Clear's argument is that a habit must be established before it can be improved, and that the moment of beginning is where habits live or die. So the first version of any behaviour is a gateway: read one page, not a chapter; write one sentence, not a section. For a procrastinator this is Fiore's discovery from the other side. The anxiety is in the starting, and a two-minute version cannot be avoided because it cannot be feared; nobody is afraid of opening a file. Some days you write the sentence and stop, and that is a vote for the identity of someone who starts. Most days the sentence becomes thirty minutes because you were already there. It is distinct from David Allen's two-minute rule, which clears genuinely small tasks; Clear's opens the door to genuinely large ones.
A real-life example
A doctoral student in Ankara decides her two-minute version is 'open the analysis file and run the first script'. The script runs in ninety seconds, the output raises a question, and forty minutes later she notices she has been working, which had not happened in a month.
How to use it
- 1Write the two-minute version of the avoided task: one physical action, under two minutes, that counts as done.
- 2Let it be enough on a bad day; the vote counts.
- 3Expect most days to continue past two minutes, and do not require it.