The one-minute method

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

A New Year’s resolution is a good example of a (commonly) failed commitment. Many people promise that they are going to do this and that on a daily basis, and then they do it a couple of times and then they give up. I believe the problem is that they set the bar too high. The solution is to define a daily activity and set your bar so low – I mean extremely low – that you cannot find an excuse not to do the daily activity, no matter what happens. Read that last sentence again. The habit must be performed Every. Single. Day. Because the moment you stop doing it, it is not a habit anymore. And if the bar is too high, the habit forming can be very difficult, because we all have bad days.

“But I don’t have enough time!” I often hear. This is a lie. You have all the time in the world, to do whatever you want. The key word is “want”. Look at your priorities. If you give up on your habit, there is only one explanation. You value other things higher and prioritize accordingly. There are two critical factors here. First, you need to aim at a noble goal. The higher the goal, the more of a reward you will feel after each daily activity. And the goal needs to expend beyond yourself. It should be of benefit to others and to the world. That makes you accountable. You know that if you don’t do this, the world will be a slightly worse place tomorrow than what it could have been, had I done what I had set out to do. Second, you need to set the bar for your daily activity ridiculously low. So low that the “not enough time” is thrown out with the garbage as the BS lie it is, even if you have the mother of all bad days. A noble goal and a simple daily task will become your little oasis of relief.

My friend Vincent Byrne posts daily words of wisdom on IG and FB, and the other day he wrote something that caught my attention: “Be careful of what you commit to”. The post was about the danger of setting the bar too high for your daily routine. When I read this something clicked inside me. I have been working with daily habit forming since 2014 and am known by my friends as “the 15-minute guy”. With fifteen minutes of daily practice you can achieve amazing results in one year. But I promise you, there are days where even 15 minutes can induce brutal friction. That’s why I started a new experiment about four months ago. Can you reduce the daily time to just 60 seconds? I have always wanted to learn how to paint, and I had absolutely zero skill when I began. Every month I do a “real” painting without the 60 second timer – a milestone. After the fourth milestone painting, I am convinced that one minute is enough.

Here’s the interesting part: I experience more friction now than ever before with my 60 second routine, but the friction works the other way around! It pushes me forward. I have not felt that before. When I start to paint, I want to keep going even after my egg timer goes off. I get into the zone and want to keep going so bad, but I am not allowed. Because my commitment is to do a daily 60 second painting – no more, no less. And when I read Vincent’s post, I realized that I have never felt that it was a chore to do a one-minute painting. I haven’t felt the resistance to start, but I always feel resistance to stop.  To claim that you don’t have 60 seconds to spare is like saying you are better at time management and have a fuller calendar than Elon Musk. Which you don’t. This means that the one-minute method is also a powerful way to reveal what you really want. If you can’t spend one minute a day to do what you love, you don’t love it. Don’t fool yourself. And life’s too short to do things you don’t love.

Maybe that’s the secret? Start with one minute, and when you get to the point where 60 seconds is unbearable because the desire to keep going is too strong, you can increase it a bit more – maybe to 90 seconds? Just make sure that it is never enough time. As long as you feel the resistance when the timer goes off, that you want to do more, then you are on the right path. I think I am close to that point right now with my sketching. Stay on this path, and with time you might be paying your bills with your 60 second routine that has turned into a 40 hour work week.