The 20 Minute Rule

[canyonwalker]

As I was doing housecleaning yesterday, and again this morning (I scrubbed the tiles in one of the showers), I used the 20 minute rule. It's a motivational technique I thought of a few years ago to help organize housecleaning and other chores that are similarly not-fun. Here are 5 things about it:

1. The fundamental idea is you commit to a chore for 20 minutes. This overcomes the dread of huge chores. For example, "I need to clean up around the house," can easily turn into, "Ugh, I have to clean all the bathrooms, vacuum the carpets, and scrub the whole kitchen!" It's easy to imagine a mountain of suck like that taking hours... at which point it's easy and tempting to put it off until you have more time and energy. 20 minutes isn't a lot of time or energy.
2. Time-limiting promotes prioritization. Okay, so instead of spending hours cleaning, you're just going to do 20 minutes. But which 20 minutes are you going to do? Now you're prioritizing. Do the "biggest bang for the buck" stuff first to get the most value for your time. You may even discover that some time consuming but low priority elements of the whole weren't even necessary.
3. Got more energy? Go another 20 minutes. You're not limited to cleaning for 20 minutes. If you clean for 20 and are tired out or need to do other things, fine; you've succeeded. But if you have time and energy left after 20 minutes, commit another 20. I find that the sense of success from employing the 20 minute rule once usually motivates me to do a second 20 right away. Yesterday I pushed it to three periods, 60 minutes total, and decided that was a fine accomplishment. Plus, it was time to shower up and meet my wife for lunch.
4. 20 minutes as a daily goal. I use "the 20 minute rule" not just as a technique to break down large chores into more manageable tasks but also as a daily goal. I figure if I just spend 20 minutes each day on cleaning the house won't get into such a state that cleaning becomes a major chore.
5. Take 5 if that's all you need. Sometimes 20 minutes is more than you have... or more than you need! Emptying the dishwasher takes, like, 5 minutes. Even short tasks are easy to procrastinate. When something takes only 5 minutes I figure, "Just do it now." It's easy to find 5 minutes between other things or while waiting.