3630: The Power of Timers by Rose Lounsbury on Boosting Productivity and Reducing Stress

[00:00:00] [SPEAKER_01] Kennt ihr auch diesen einen Freund, der morgens einfach so ruckzuck aus dem Bett und danach aus dem Grinsen gar nicht mehr rauskommt? Der sogar noch vor dem ersten Kaffee unverschämt gut gelaunt ist und mit der Morgensonne um die Wette strahlt? Furchtbar, ekelhaft, wie kann man nur so...

[00:00:14] [SPEAKER_02] Ausgeruht sein? Ganz einfach, trainiere deinen Schlaf und werde auch du zum Morgenmenschen. Mit der Galaxy Watch 7 oder dem Galaxy Ring und der Samsung Health App.

[00:00:26] [SPEAKER_03] Wenn jemand Charles und Melanie gesagt hätte, dass sie nach ihrem Tinder Match gemeinsam einen Channel mit crazy Aufgaben starten, also wirklich crazy, fünf Tage auf einer einsamen Insel verbringen, eine Zipline an einem Gurt runterrasen, eine Million Views knacken, eine Wand mit Saugnöpfen hochklettern und Fallschirm springen in Ägypten? Das hätten die beiden niemals geglaubt. Aber das ist das Ding mit Tinder. Es führt dich an Orte, die du nie erwartet hättest. Wohin es dich auch führt. It starts with a swipe. Tinder.

[00:00:56] [SPEAKER_00] This is Optimal Living Daily. The Power of Timers by Rose Lounsbury of roselounsbury.com. And I'm Justin Mollick, your personal narrator, reading to you every single day of the year with permission from the authors. So with that, we're gonna get right to it as we optimize your life. The Power of Timers by Rose Lounsbury of roselounsbury.com.

[00:01:22] [SPEAKER_00] I have 45 minutes to type this. No more, no less. Why? Because I set a timer and I'm not allowing myself to spend more than that amount of time on this task. If you haven't guessed, today I'm gonna tell you how time limits can help you accomplish more and stress less in many aspects of your life. So without further delay, here are some of my top time tips. Number one, the two-minute rule.

[00:01:51] [SPEAKER_00] This is a bedrock productivity rule. Basically, if a task will take you less than two minutes to complete, do it now. If you've never adopted this rule, I highly recommend trying it for just one day. You'd be amazed at what you can accomplish in just two minutes. In fact, just before I sat down to write this post, I was upstairs getting a sweater and I noticed that my bag of delicate laundry needed washing.

[00:02:16] [SPEAKER_00] I see this bag every day and I usually ignore it until I run out of some vital article of clothing. But today, because I knew I was writing this blog post, I thought, hey, it'll take me less than two minutes to run this downstairs to the washing machine. So I did. Clean delicates coming up. Yay. If you don't think this rule works, ask my friend, a mom extraordinaire artist entrepreneur with five young children. She swears by it. And I never argue with a mom extraordinaire artist entrepreneur.

[00:02:47] [SPEAKER_00] Number two, set timers. When facing a task, especially an undesirable one, I try to set a timer for the amount of time I'd like to spend on it. If I finish the task in that amount of time, great. If not, I stop at the end of the time and come back later. For example, this morning, I set myself the task of figuring out my new scanner. While I love the convenience of technology, I'm a bit of a technophobe.

[00:03:15] [SPEAKER_00] Devices like dogs can smell my fear and often respond to me in aggressive, non-compliant ways. But the scanner arrived last week and I knew I needed to figure it out, so I set a timer. 45 minutes later, after downloading the software that wouldn't load from the CD and watching several YouTube videos, I realized this scanner truly wasn't going to work. See, I'm not paranoid. Technology really does hate me. My timer dinged just as I was printing my return label and packing it back into its box.

[00:03:46] [SPEAKER_00] What's so cool about this is that normally, I would have spent another hour or so cursing the computer gods and fretting over why it wasn't working. This technology snafu might have ruined my whole day. I might have even gone so far as to call and harass my husband at work. I mean, what husband doesn't love a frustrated call from his wife about a problem he did not cause and can do nothing at the moment to solve? This is the stuff marriages are made of.

[00:04:12] [SPEAKER_00] But because I knew I had only 45 minutes, I kept myself moving, trying different problem-solving strategies until I came to a solution. Return it. When I was teaching middle school, we called this creating a sense of urgency in the classroom. If you want your students to learn and work hard, you have to create the feeling within your classroom that they need to be working. Setting a timer can create this same sense in your daily life.

[00:04:40] [SPEAKER_00] And 45 minutes isn't a magic number. You can set a timer for however long you want. I use this strategy with a client of mine who has ADHD. She's in graduate school and we meet weekly to go over deadlines and work on projects. One thing I noticed about her is how long she spends on writing tasks. I even told her, watching you write is like watching somebody run really, really hard, but only move forward a few inches. She nodded.

[00:05:10] [SPEAKER_00] Thinks she feels that way all the time. She knows she's spending too much time on a task, yet she cannot stop herself from doing it. The solution? Timers. I gave her no more than 30 minutes for brainstorming initial ideas. She told me that no one ever had her write like this before and that it's working really well for her. And number three, close distractions. This is an important component to the timer strategy. If you're going to give yourself time limits for tasks,

[00:05:40] [SPEAKER_00] you must spend all of that time on that task. That means no Facebook, no email, no social media, no coffee breaks, nada. Focus in on what you need to do in that time only. Close extraneous browser windows, silence your phone, put a movie on for your kids, whatever you've got to do to get undistracted, focused time. Well, as Forrest Gump would say, that's all I've got to say about that. And wow, I have 23 minutes left.

[00:06:09] [SPEAKER_00] I guess that sense of urgency thing is really true. Want to hear about my childhood? My first pet? That rash I need to call the doctor about? No? You think I should go back, revise, and publish this post? I agree. And heck, maybe I'll even use the extra time to call my doctor. You just listened to the post titled, The Power of Timers by Rose Lounsbury of roselounsbury.com. And I'll be right back with my commentary.

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[00:08:58] [SPEAKER_00] The idea that work just seems to expand to fill whatever time you give it. If she hadn't set that time limit, who knows? That post might have taken the whole day. And I like her tips. The two-minute rule is great. It's so easy to see a small task, like her example of the laundry, and just think, I'll get to it later. I know I've done that with things like maybe responding to a quick email or putting away a few things that are out of place. They seem so small,

[00:09:26] [SPEAKER_00] but when they pile up, it just adds to that mental clutter. Trying to knock those out right away if they take less than two minutes, I can make a big difference in how the day feels. I try to do that with the dishes now. And timers for bigger tasks is great too. Sometimes I can get really caught up in tiny, tiny details trying to make podcast episodes perfect, for example. But if I tell myself, okay, you've got X amount of time for this, then it forces me to focus on what's most important and keep moving.

[00:09:56] [SPEAKER_00] It helps to stop me from going down that rabbit hole of perfectionism, which honestly probably doesn't make a huge difference to most people listening anyway. Maybe you can relate to the perfectionism thing. It's about finding that balance and not letting a task take over your whole day. Definitely some good practical stuff to try out. Let me know if you do try it out and how it goes for you. And with that, thank you for being here and optimizing your life with me. Have a great rest of your day and I'll be back tomorrow where your optimal life awaits. Let me know if I can't wait. Let me know if it has a chance of going down that rabbit hole in the first place. Let me know if I can see you for a little bit. .