takes 5 seconds to change your life
Throughout every day your mind creates little instinctual pings, impulse messages sent from yourself to yourself, keeping you on track by reminding you of the things you know you should probably be doing. These little prompts are on your side – you want you to succeed.
Regardless of how much you ignore them: they are resistant to your resistance. Ignoring one ping doesn’t stop future ping’s from happening – each time you hear one of these little messages and ignore it, you risk falling into the procrastination doom loop.
Ignoring the smaller prompts feeds into this cycle – guilt fosters self-doubt which then invites helplessness leading to excuses and creating an external locus of control where you believe your life is at the mercy of factors beyond your control.
Each instinctual ping that is ignored doesn’t just disappear – they start to build up, and will continue to occupy the mind until they are acted on. If they are not acted on, the alternative is to drown out the constant nagging with distraction – not exactly the best catalyst for productivity.
The Procrastination Doom Loop
Most of the time (approximately 40% of the day), we live our lives in autopilot mode – where we are acting solely out of habit. This automatic part of the human brain acts like an overprotective, irrational, “helicopter” parent – its principal goal is to keep you safe above all else. It picks up on the things that have proven to keep you safe in the past and encourages you to continue to do those things. When you stop to think, when you hesitate, and when you feel uncertain, you are signalling to your brain that something is wrong and it goes into overdrive to protect you. However, this automatic process doesn’t know how to distinguish between what is dangerous and what is not – all it knows is what has worked to keep you safe in the past. By continuing to live in autopilot mode, you lose functioning of the prefrontal cortex, which makes breaking habits and creating change very difficult.
The prefrontal cortex is the front section of the brain that’s involved in decision making, planning and working towards goals. If you want to take back control of your life and outsmart your old habits, this is what you want to switch on. This is where Mel Robbins ‘5 Second Rule’ comes in handy – a simple (but not easy) strategy that works:
“5-4-3-2-1-GO!”
“If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it.”
There is a 5 second window that exists for everyone between the moment you have an instinct to change and your overprotective mind killing it. It’s not enough time for the automatic brain to fully process any hesitation or uncertainty to stop you. So by physically moving towards your intended action as soon as you’re prompted, you can avoid having to face the brain’s inbuilt protective barrier, and you will experience significantly less resistance. The activation energy, which is the amount of energy required to start a reaction, is significantly higher than the amount of energy to keep it going. The quicker you respond to that first ping, the less energy you will require to get started, which means even less energy to keep it going than if you were to delay the process.
With every inner prompt that arises, you are presented with the opportunity to create a circuit break from old habits. When you act on a prompt, there is a release of dopamine (the ‘feel good’ neurotransmitter) in the brain. Each small accomplishment feeds into this natural reward system, and keeps our brain wanting more. A new positive feedback loop is created, where the brain is encouraged to achieve goals because it is aware of the reward that follows.
Practising this technique cultivates an internal locus of control, meaning that you believe you have control over your outcomes and success – a vital component for productivity and motivation.
Obviously not all impulses are necessarily things you should be acting on, so it’s important to know exactly what your bigger picture goals are. When your goals are properly established and well-defined, your constructive impulses will become more obvious and there will be an even larger dopamine reward response.
In order to avoid feeling overwhelmed at the thought of major bigger-picture goals, acting on the smaller goals in everyday life gets you out of passive autopilot mode and helps you to gain a sense of confidence in your ability to control your outcomes. This process puts you in a state of momentum and allows you to create a habit of progression.
Start small and learn to notice the prompts as they arise. When you consciously and consistently act in response to the inner voice that wants you to succeed, the natural progression will allow the bigger-picture goals to fall into place.
References:
Kurniawan, I. T., Guitart-Masip, M., & Dolan, R. J. (2011). Dopamine and effort-based decision making. Frontiers in neuroscience, 5, 81. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2011.00081
Zhang, W., Wang, X. & Feng, T. (2016). Identifying the Neural Substrates of Procrastination: a Resting-State fMRI Study. Sci Rep 6, 33203. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep33203
