The 5-Minute Rule: The Tiny Hack That Beats Procrastination

We’ve all done it: stared at a task for an hour, hated it the whole time, and then...still didn’t start. It’s not that you’re lazy. It’s that the task feels like too much.

That’s where the 5-Minute Rule comes in—a ridiculously simple trick that’s helped thousands of people start when they just couldn’t. And here’s the wild part: once you start, you often keep going.

Let’s break it down and show you how to use it to boost your productivity, reduce mental resistance, and finally get things done (even the boring stuff).

🕛 What Is the 5-Minute Rule?

It’s simple: Tell yourself you only have to do a task for five minutes. That’s it.

If it still sucks after five minutes, you can stop—no guilt. But 9 times out of 10, once you're in the zone, you’ll want to keep going.

It tricks your brain into lowering the resistance wall. You stop negotiating with yourself and just start.

🧹 Why It Works

Your brain sees big tasks as threats to your energy. The 5-minute trick makes any task feel more doable, even if it’s just:

• Reading one page

• Opening the doc you’ve been avoiding

• Doing 5 push-ups

• Cleaning one corner of your room

It builds momentum, and momentum builds motivation. Not the other way around.

🎓 How to Use It for Studying

Let’s say you’ve got a huge exam coming up. Instead of staring at your textbook for 30 minutes thinking about how much you don’t want to start...

📅 Set a 5-minute timer and say: “I’ll just read the first paragraph.”

What usually happens? You get into it, and 20 minutes later, you're actually studying. If not? At least you did something. That’s a win.

✅ Use the 5-Minute Rule With Fixie

Here’s where Fixie makes this even better:

• Create a new goal in Fixie like: "Study for 5 minutes every day" or "Clean one thing each night."

• Start tracking your 5-minute streaks.

• Watch how tiny tasks turn into actual habits over time.

The best part? You’ll start to trust yourself again. You’ll prove that you can do hard things—you just don’t have to do them all at once.

🔹 Quick Ideas to Try This Week

• ☑️ Write one sentence of your essay

• ☑️ Walk outside for 5 minutes

• ☑️ Do 5 minutes of Duolingo

• ☑️ Organize one drawer

• ☑️ Do one Fixie journal entry

🚀 Final Thoughts

Big goals can feel scary. But five minutes? You can always do five minutes.

So the next time your brain goes “ugh, I can’t deal with this right now”, hit it back with: “Okay. Just five minutes.”

Then open Fixie, log your win, and feel weirdly proud of yourself.

It’s that easy. 🚀