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.