The Two Minute Rule
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officialhogi
Did you know that a habit can be completed within just a few seconds? Yes, you heard me. A habit can be completed in seconds and seconds can become minutes and minutes become hours.
You don’t have to start big. You can start by taking small steps.
Just look at it as a game. You can’t defeat the boss if you just started the game. You have to start small. Begin with the basics until it becomes automatic and easy. Once the small step becomes a natural habit, you can increase the duration of the activity. Doing it for minutes or even hours.
You can see small steps as a stepping stone to a bigger event. The entry point.
A general rule that you can follow is the two-minute rule.
The Two Minute Rule
When you start a habit, it should take less than two minutes to do.
Nearly all habits can be scaled down to 2 minutes and the idea behind the two minute rule is to make the habit as easy as possible to start. You want to create a gateway, a natural process that makes it easy for you to start.
You can even map out your goal on a scale from “very easy” to “very hard”. The point is to master the art of showing up because you can only improve if you take action.
“standardize before you optimize. You can’t improve a habit that doesn’t exist”
Once you have established the habit of showing up, you can combine the 2 minute rule with a technique called habit shaping.
Habit Shaping
Basically, habit shaping is the advancement to intermediate steps in your habit process. You focus on mastering the stage before you move to the next level. So, you start with phrase one of your habits and slowly move forward to phrase two and three and so on.
Eventually, you will build up a habit that you wanted.