Instagram Founder's 5-Minute Cure for Procrastination

1. Intro: Hi, I'm Brian Bull, and today you're about to learn how to stop procrastinating. Using a simple five minute technique used also by Instagram's founder, Kevin Systrom. I've now taught this technique for more than 1200 people from more than 98 different countries all over the world to finally beat their procrastination, and people have been absolutely thrilled by the results they've been getting. I've studied the leading researchers in psychology and behavior, and what they taught me is that the moment you want to change, break a habit or do something that's hard or scary, and you hesitate, your brain goes to work to stop you. We keep telling ourselves that this time we're really gonna do it. But we never do something seemingly more important and more urgent, always seems to come up, and we don't get it done. This doesn't have to be your experience. I've created five minute motivation to show you how to free yourself, beat procrastination and take control of your life once and for all. This program is awesome, Raelian crying. Every week I meet people who would desperately like to exercise finish their latest project . Who would like to study and finish college, but they just can't do it. They feel stuck and overwhelmed. Other start, but then fall off the wagon in a matter of weeks or even days. And this also happened to me in my own life. Ever since my leader years of high school, I had tried to make exercise of permanent habit, but for over 12 years it never stuck. Despite my efforts, I just couldn't get motivated. I went out and I read every book and I listen to every audio and video course on motivation . I went through my usual get motivated routine. I listen to motivational videos. Did visualization techniques learned from some of the greatest motivational speakers, like Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar and Nick Will you check? And you know what? And things didn't change for months. Not until one evening, when I accidentally discovered a surprisingly effective technique and saw that the changes I made were actually lasting. I realized why the prior strategies. I relied on work, complete failures. I know exercise almost every day. I work out at my local gym two times per week and do yoga five times. I'm really close to achieving and even exceeding my fitness goals. I taught myself how to beat my procrastination with a simple mind trick which led to an amazing superpower. And that's what I'm gonna teach you how to do. You'll get my complete step by step blueprint on how to use the five minute rule in your own life and a series of nine video trainings plus set of powerful exercises to help you beat your workout. Procrastination Reach your biggest wildest dreams. Inside this course, I'm gonna help you create your very own five minute rule that perfectly fits with your own unique life situation, how to stay motivated during the long run and the three critical rules you can't afford to break to make your five minute rule a success. This technique, backed by the latest findings in neuroscience and behavioral psychology and INSTAGRAM founder Kevin Systems favorite Lie Pack, allows you to beat your brain at its own game and distract it from the ways that it tries to sabotage. And this changes everything. Learning this technique is a totally new way to approach motivation and gives you a powerful, powerful new superpower, and I'm really excited to have it all in one awesome course for you to discover. And I think this is gonna be fun. It's gonna be a life changing experience for you, and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. Alright, if you're ready to get started and if you want to discover how you can cure your procrastination in just five minutes, then I invite you to join me in this breathtaking new program. Watch session number one. Now learn the science behind why we procrastinate. Go through the program and do all the exercises that I'll give you. It'll make a huge difference in your life. Okay, c inside. Cheers. 2. Welcome & Orientation: congratulations and welcome to five minute motivation. Hi, I'm Brian Bold. Welcome to five minute motivation. I'm so excited to be here with you. And I think this is going to be It's gonna be a life changing experience for you, and I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. So congratulations and welcome to five minute motivation. You've made a great decision and a great investment in yourself and your future. I think when you look back, you're going to see that this was one of, if not the best investments that you've ever made yourself. This program will change your life if you use it. This matters. I know it's important to make this work. I acknowledge you for being here. I take this seriously. I know that life can often feel like you're trashing around in quicksand. The heart of your struggle. The deeper you sink until you can't see how you'll ever be free. There are many reasons why people procrastinate and personally, I've heard them all. We keep telling ourselves that this time we're really gonna do it. But we never do something Seemingly mawr important and more urgent always seems to come up and we don't get it done. This doesn't have to be your experience. I've created five minute motivation to show you how to free yourself, beat procrastination and take control of your life once and for all. The program is also Raelian crying. Every week I meet people who would desperately like to exercise finish their latest project . Who would like to study and finish college, but they just can't do it. They feel stuck and overwhelmed other start, but then fall off the wagon in a matter of weeks or even days. And this also happened to me in my own life. Ever since my later years of high school, I had tried to make exercise a permanent Hammett, but for over 12 years it never stopped. Despite my efforts, I just couldn't get motivated. I went out and I read every book, and I listened every audio and video course on motivation. I went through my usual get motivated routine. I listen to motivational videos, did visualization techniques learned from some of the great motivational speakers like Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar and Nick. Will you check? And you know what? None of it worked very well for me I just couldn't get motivated. It was all very hit and miss. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't and it just didn't feel right. My motivational burst to change would usually last me about three weeks, in some cases, even two months before I'd quit, for one reason or another. Sometimes there is no reason. I just stopped working out or studying for 20 minutes. Looked like climbing on Everest. The idea of exercising or studying mathematics was wholly unappealing. I felt so defeated and I waas, and it wasn't just the sheer amount of time and effort that discouraged me. It was the total amount of work, sweat and dedication I needed to put in to reach my goals. It was the best distance between here and there. A year's worth of work weighed on my mind. I felt overwhelmed, discouraged and defeated before he'd even done anything. And things didn't change for months. Not until one evening on an ordinary early July evening when I accidentally discovered a surprisingly effective mind trick and I saw that the changes I made were actually lasted. I realized why the prior strategies I relied upon were complete failures. I now exercise almost every day. I work out at my local gym two times per week and I do yoga five times per week. I'm really close to achieving and even exceeding my fitness goals. I taught myself how to beat my procrastination with a simple mind trick which led to an amazing superpower. And that's what I'm gonna teach you how to do. You see, most people don't know where motivation really comes from, and we think hopefully one day we'll just have motivation. You know, we'll wake up and feel motivated, but my favorite metaphor to teach people is this one. The power plant doesn't have energy. It generates energy in the same way we don't have motivation, way, generate motivation. Listen, motivation is not something you have. Motivation is something you create and you can create it any moment you want. Motivation is just a feeling of a sense of certainty that you can pull something off and you can create that feeling literally in a moment. And to make changes last, you need to stop fighting against your brain when you start playing by your brains. Rules lasting change isn't so hard. Five minute motivation will show you how to free yourself and become everything your meant to be. I think a five minute motivation is the next evolution of goal setting and motivation. The simple five minute rule helps Instagram's founder, Kevin Systrom, crushed procrastination and tackle the tasks he tends to put on what Axios is. Mike Allen asked the billionaire entrepreneur for his favorite life. Systrom didn't wax poetic about some elaborate productivity system or extol the life changing nature of his morning routine. Instead, he started talking about his favorite five minute rule. This rule is the easiest and simplest trick that I learned to beat procrastination, and it will better equip you to change your life than any other so called motivational book or technique. Five minute motivation is a form of meta cognition, which means that it's a way of tricking your brain in order to achieve your greater goals. This five minute rule allows you to beat your brain at its own game and distracted from the ways that it tries to sabotage, and this changes everything. If you'll just follow what I teach in this program, I believe that it could make a profound difference on your results. Energy level and personal satisfaction. This program is made of eight parts, each dedicated to one stock and must be practised in the order written. You won't succeed with this program by changing the order or by skipping a step Watch session. Number one. Now learn the science behind why we procrastinate. Go through the program and do all the exercises that I'll give you. It will make a huge difference in your life. Okay, let's get started. 3. Why We Procrastinate And The 3 Brains: why we procrastinate. And the three brains Years of thing. When I discovered this my neck I felt like a superhero who just discovered a superpower. But I didn't know how or why it worked. I just knew that it did, as I shared this mind trick with others and they started using it. People started reaching out to me, asking how and why it worked so well. I decided to do some research. What I found was fascinating, and I'm going to share it with you right now. Okay, So how many times have you or someone you know set a huge goal to lose 40 or more pounds or exercise for an hour, six days a week, only to fall off the wagon a few weeks or days later? We all do it. And in 99.99% of cases we failed, and we fail miserably. Why is that? So the answer is fairly obvious when you confront something that's going to require you to change your behavior, you basically come face to face with the gap between who you are right now and the future person you want to be. And sometimes when you see how big that gap is. It's overwhelming the amount of work that it's going to take toe close. That gap suddenly feels insurmountable. Reason why you feel insecure is because you're starting to focus too much on your goal, how much you're going to have to do, and that's overwhelming. I've studied the leading researchers in psychology and behavior, and what they've taught me is that the moment you want to change, break a habit or do something that's hard or scary and you hesitate. Your brain goes to work to stop you. And there's actually a neurological reason why changes so hard. Your brain is designed to stop you from changing. Let me explain. You're three brains in one. Let's talk now about evolutionary psychology. Okay, your three brains in one, Dr Paul MacLean, originated a theory that he called the tri une brain theory. The idea is that we have three brains in one, each designed for a different part of life. Now our reptilian brain is about the body and the physical world, and I'm generalizing here, but you'll get the idea. Our mammalian brain, but one that grew about our reptilian brain is about emotions in relationship and are thinking brain is about thoughts and decisions. Here's an image of what I'm talking about so you can see the reptilian brain. And then around it grew the mammalian brain. And then around that this big cortex that we have, which is a dense network of neurons. This is our thinking brain. Okay, the kind of post mammalian brain. And this is the part of our brain that allows us to have you no self reflexive consciousness to make these very, very abstract symbols and to not only make tools, but also to make tools that make tools to do all these things that give us all these big, great advantages to design the environments that we live in, like building towns, cities and metropolis to have very high levels of communication like smartphones, the Internet and process things and analyze at an abstract level that allows us to get this huge advantage over animals. This is the tri une bring three brains in one reptilian brain. It kind of runs your automatic nervous system. It beats your heart. It keeps you breathing. It's the fight or flight or freeze brain. You know, if you're threatened it just kind of takes over and get you moving quickly to get out of danger. It's the brain that's interested in survival and reproduction. The mammalian brain, the emotional brain. This evolved in mammals. And this is the part of our brain that is responsible for emotions that we feel. And emotions are typically about relationships. OK, so it's the emotional brain. It forms these deep emotional bonds with those who we care about. It also is responsible for some of the higher you might call them negative feelings we have towards each other and then the thinking part of our brain. This is the conscious brain. This is where we can do symbolizing language and where we can try things out in our mind before we actually do them in the real world. Now, as you can imagine, this is an incredible miracle that we've been born with, in fact, that we each have one of these. It's like it's like an impossible miracle of reality in the universe, but it also comes with its challenges. And because these three parts of our brain are so powerful, they also have some little let's just call them loops that we can get into that screw us up . So if you've ever experienced an inner conflict, where part of you wants to do something, but another part of you is preventing you from taking action? You're experiencing some type of internal mental emotional conflict. Well, it's most likely 83 brain conflict. So maybe you're driving down the road and you start to get hungry, and the first thing you think is french fries. Okay, French fries will be yummy, but then another party, You comes up and says, French rice, that's not a very good idea. That's not healthy. And if you eat those French fries, you're just going to feel sluggish, and you've got an important meeting to go to so you can't afford, you know, going to sleep in that meeting and then you go, man. But those fry some really good. Maybe I'll get some fries, but I'll only have a few of them, and then the bargaining starts. Taking place with this is likely a three brain kind of thing. And if you just notice when you have inner conflict, it's probably because your body wants to do one thing. Your emotions want to do something else, and the logical or rational part of you has another idea. So are three. In one, brain is designed perfectly, but for a different time and place. It's designed for a life that was 100,000 years ago. Now I recommend that you check out Dr Paul MacLean and the tri une brain theory. If you want to get an even clearer picture of this topic again, we're wired for a time and place that doesn't exist. We're wired for a life of about 100,000 years ago. Not for this artificial reality that we live in now and now. Evolutionary psychologists call some of these problematic wear rings cognitive biases, another topic to look up online. If it's not something that you paid attention to, studying cognitive biases can really be an enlightening experience. It can help you get control of yourself and understand why it's so hard to make progress in the modern environment. So, for example, why when you set a huge goal to lose £40 or more, or exercise for an hour, six days a week, you fall off the wagon a few weeks or days later. Why is that so this can feel like a person failing, as though the decision not to exercise was a sign of weak character or at least willpower. But you may just be giving into humans evolutionary instinct to be lazy. You see, our ancestors exerted so much energy hunting and gathering that they sought rest whenever they could weigh, are predisposed to want to conserve energy, notice the reptilian brain working to stop us from exercising. Daniel Lieberman, an expert in human evolutionary biology, says that it's not our natural inclination to exercise for health alone. It's natural and normal to be physically lazy, he says. Hunter gatherers in the Kalahari or the Amazon are Justus, likely as 21st century Americans to instinctually avoid unnecessary exertion. Although a small percentage of people today exercise is a form of medicine doing their prescribed dose, the best majority of people today behaved Justus their ancestors by exercising only when it's fun as a form of play or when necessary. Lieberman explains that our ancestors struggled to amass enough food to make up for the calories they burn, tracking down that food so they needed to conserve their energy when they could. Most modern humans who do exercise don't need to worry about whether, after a hard workout they'll be able to make up for the calorie deficit. You see, our instincts are always to save energy. This is why we have the reptilian brain for most of human evolution. If you wanted to put dinner on the table, you had to work really hard. It's only recently we have machines and technology to make our lives easier. We've inherited these ancient instincts, but we've created this dream world, and the result is in activity. So how do we beat these powerful evolutionary forces, especially the conflict between our rational brain and the reptilian brain that wants to conserve energy? Willpower is the answer. 4. Willpower: The Secret to Motivation: will power the secret to motivation. So what really happens when you have a three brain conflict? Well, your prefrontal cortex shuts down part of the brain that's responsible for decision making and rational thought. When that happens, your willpower gets depleted. You lose control of your own decision making, and you fall into the habit of procrastination. A part of you wants to take action, but then another part of you, in most cases, the lizard or emotional parts of your brain take over and there you have it, a perfect recipe for procrastination. The link to procrastination is that you need to activate part of your prefrontal cortex to get out of the cycle. The key is to activate your prefrontal cortex before you're in the 12 hour. That's where a concept called Activation Energy comes into play. Activation Energy is something that was first introduced by into the field of human behavior and psychology several decades ago by a rock star professor at the University of Chicago that studied a state of flow. His name was Mohali six Cent Mahalia, and he was one of the first to study human behavior human performance, and he coined the term activation energy. He actually, I borrowed it from chemistry, and it's a term that describes this phenomenon in order to start any kind of chemical reaction. It takes a tremendous amount of energy to create that initial spark, a lot more energy to start it than to keep it going. There's a direct correlation to you and me. Science proves that the initial amount of energy to start a reaction the activation energy is significantly higher than the amount of energy required to keep it going. Same in life. That activation energy required to get you going is really hard to come by. Have you ever noticed how hard it is to just get started? How hard is it to get to the gym? That feeling, How hard is it to get started? This is what Mihalis talking about. You need activation energy to start the chain to start toe workout. That's the key to creating any kind of change, this activation energy inside of you that causes the initial go and then what? We're over time. Once you start, there's a chain reaction and that allows you to keep going. Creating that initial spark takes a little bit of effort, and if you use this next model you're about to learn, it will make it a lot more effective. Now, when they launch the space shuttle up into space, you may notice that it's attached to this massive rocket. 80% of the weight and the fuel of the launch is that other rocket to get it up into space. So why do they need that big rocket? And why do they need all that additional fuel? Well, they needed to reach escape velocity because the gravity of the earth is very powerful and to escape from the Earth's gravity, they need all that extra power that huge rocket it on. Lee Burns for about two minutes takes the space shuttle up something 26 miles into space, and then it falls off so that the space shuttle can go fast enough to get into outer space . And then it's got a little bit of fuel on board to maneuver and fly around the earth and come back and land. And starting any kind of action is kind of like launching the spaceship when you want to take action. For example, go to the gym study for your finals. Clean your kitchen, your other two brains that we've talked about in the previous video. We'll try to pull you back into your comfort zone. Making a choice even the most banal has a biological cost indeed, and it consumes our mental energies. This is why, at the end of the day, we tend to crash in front of TV, skip our workout or try some junk food with which to cram. Now most people give up right here. So how do we create that initial spark? Where do we get that big rocket? All that additional fuel we need to reach, escape velocity and start taking action. Willpower is the answer. Willpower is the inner strength that enables you to make decisions and carry them out. It gives you the strength to take action and perform tasks and plans despite inner resistance, discomfort, laziness or difficulties. You see willpower is the rarest, most valuable and the most precious energy that we have, and it's the only tool we can use that allows us to beat our inner conflict. Are three brains in one conflict because it activates your prefrontal cortex? You see when there's will power, there's firmness decisiveness, determination, assertiveness, resolution, persistence and the power of pushing yourself towards goals and achievements. Now studies have shown that we only get a little bit of willpower every day. So an ingenious study that they've done that pounds each of us gets a little bit of willpower, and most of us burn it on internal conflict and multitasking and doing things that just waste our time and energy. Roy Bouwmeester, one of the world's most prolific and influential psychologist, compares our willpower to the battery of a smartphone. When were well rested and fed are will powers at the highest level, although this mental battery tends to discharge when a series of decisions occurred. Roy Bouwmeester, a psychologist in Florida State University, calls this ego depletion, and he proved its existence by sitting students next to a plate of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. Some were allowed to snack away. Others ordered to abstain. Afterwards, both groups were asked to complete difficult puzzles. Students who had been forced to resist the cookies had so depleted their reserves of self control that when faced with this new task, they quickly threw in the towel. Cookie eaters, on the other hand, had conserved their willpower and worked on the puzzles longer. And, as it turns out, the two sources of ego depletion or well power drains were found to be effort and perceived difficult. And this is the very reason why are resolved to hit the gym. Weakens after we've slogged through a soul sapping day. At work are mental energy or willpower is already well drained. After a hard day in the office and along, 30 or even 60 minute workout seems now impossible to even start. The effort it will take feels insurmountable, and the perceived difficulty of the task shuts down our brain way become overwhelmed and we haven't even started, and this literally kills motivation. So how does five minute motivation beat the system in your head? How does it beat the three brain conflict? And how does it eliminate these two biggest willpower drains? At its most basic level, five minute motivation is a tool that helps you take action. Five minute motivation creates activation energy in you. Five minute motivations how you activate change inside of you. And in the next video, you're going to learn how you activate that change inside way. Want to use that limited willpower that we get each day intelligently. Because if we wait till the end of the day and we're not gonna have any of it left and we're just gonna fall back into our old comfort zone and our old habits all right, see in the next. 5. The Power of the 5-Minute Rule: the power of the five minutes Hi and welcome to Session number three. In this session, you'll learn what the five minute rule really is. How it beats thes human limitations, that we've talked about lack of willpower and procrastination and how to use it to motivate yourself in just five minutes. This is the very same trick I personally used to beat my 12 year old workout procrastination long before I discovered that, in fact, Instagram's founder, Kevin Systrom, was also using it to his advantage. Well, I guess the power of the five minute rule really speaks for itself. Now. Fast forward to a lazy summer evening in July 12th 2016. Like many other times that evening, I reflected on my past and was not impressed. I want to do exercise at least three times per week, shred some belly fat and already fantasized about having a perfect beach body. My top workout choice was fitness. I wasn't about to set a new one year goal, though, or a mid New Year's resolution because they have a ridiculously low 8% success rate. Mind motivational burst to change would usually last me about three weeks in some cases even two months before I quit, for one reason or another. Sometimes there was no reason. I'm just stop. But this I decided to give it one last shot. I'd start right now on the spot for 20 minutes, but I remain laying in my bed. I just couldn't get motivated. A 20 minute workout look like climbing Mount Everest. The idea of exercise was wholly on appealing. I felt completely defeated. Then I got an idea, seemingly from nowhere. What if, instead of this big 20 minute exercise of sweat and discomfort, I did only five minutes? I knew I could do five minutes. Suck it up, I said myself, Just go for five minutes. If it's horrible, quit. I'd have no requirement to do more. Just a five minute exercise. It was the true opposite of my Mount Everest workout. I laughed off the idea literally. How stupid. Five minutes of exercising isn't going to help anything. I really needed to put in more work than that, but every time I switch back to my first plan, I couldn't do it. After I got tired of failing to do the 20 minute workout, I thought, whatever I'll do. Five minutes I got down on the ground. Did one pull up? Then the second five minutes past changed my life for good. When I got into position, I noticed it was exactly the same as the start to an actual 20 minute workout. I did my pull up, my shoulder popped, my elbows needed. But I did a few more since I was already in position. Every pull. It was a struggle to my under use muscles and stubborn brain as I stood up. But I reached a conclusion that it was better than just lying in bed, doing nothing. I felt like quitting at this point, but then I had the idea to set another small challenge. It was too easy to turn down. I got into push up position and did one. Then I did a few more. Interestingly, I thought, This is hard, but not as hard as I was making it out to be. My muscles were warming up. My motivation to doom or had definitely increased. But it was so low to start with and I was so out of shape that I still had plenty of internal resistance. I continued on with the same strategy, going as small as necessary to continue. Every time I baited myself with a super easy challenge, I met or exceeded it. It felt nice to hit my targets, however small. When I finished, I had exercised for 40 minutes. Felt great about it. It's important to note that these were individual decisions. At no point did I have the full weight of completing a 20 or even 40 minute workout program on my mind. If I had, I would have never done it. As 2016 went on. I continue to require short, easy workouts from myself and, surprisingly, each and every time I completed the whole 40 minute workout, there were two major things that I noticed First. Just a couple of minutes of exercising does make a difference in how you feel. I felt stronger and my muscles were better conditions. Second, I realized that exercise was becoming habitual automatic. Even with such a ridiculous small challenge, I was doing something every day. Regular workouts were becoming easier after this positive experience, which lasted, I wondered of a scientific explanation existed for why super small and easy steps work better than larger goals. Research showed that there are indeed answers and you'll see them throughout this course. So what is the five minute rule? Since I refer to the five minute rule throughout this course, I want to briefly explain the concept. I think of the five minute rule as the next evolution of gold setting and motivation. It's the key toe long term success, and it's the key to getting yourself to take consistent action. Five minute long actions air basically much smaller versions of ordinary actions. For example, 40 minutes or one hour long workouts. Armin ified in June 5 minute long workouts. The foundation of the five minute motivation system is in super small and easy steps. The concept of small steps is nothing new, but how and why they work have not been fully studied. Power of five minute rule comes from the small amount of will power we need to force ourselves to take action. It doesn't take a lot of willpower to do something for just five minutes, and the benefits from following the five minute rule is surprisingly big results. First, there's a great chance that you'll do bonus reps after you meet your small requirement. This is because we already desire these positive behaviors, and starting them reduces internal resistance. Second benefit is the routine. Even if you don't exceed your super small requirement, the routine or action that you wanna automate will begin to become a habit. Another benefit is constant success a bank maybe too big to fail. But five minutes of taking action is too small to fail, and so it lacks the common destructive feelings of guilt and inadequacy that comes with gold failure. This is one of the very few systems that practically guarantees success every day, thanks to a potent encouragements, viral and always attainable targets. Using the five minute rule made me feel unstoppable. Prior to that, I felt unstoppable. To summarize. The five minute rule is a super small action that you force yourself to do every day in the next session. You're gonna learn what to do when you feel heavy resistance. You see with my willpower and energy levels are reasonably high. I tend to use the five minute rule, but other times on off days I resort to my last secret weapon, so called mini rule. See, there 6. Mini Rules And What To Do When You Feel Heavy Resistance: many rules and what to do when you feel heavy resistance, A skill you'll pick up is you practice. The five minute rule is finding creative ways to make your actions smaller and smaller. If you feel resistance personally, when my willpower and energy levels are reasonably high, I tend to use the five minute rule. But other times on off days, I resort to my last secret weapon, the so called mini rule. The mini rule is basically a much smaller version of the five minute rule. Running for five minutes per day is unified into just stepping out of your house. Five minutes of yoga becomes just lying down in your man. Studying for five minutes becomes just opening your tax book. So, for example, if you're resisting five minutes short, sprints go even smaller and use many action steps. Say you have to run for one minute or easier that you have to just put your workout shoes on. Let me tell you a story. When I had a headache, I started small. It seemed literally impossible, a first based on how I felt, and in the past there was no way I would even attempt to take action in those circumstances . With such a great excuse, I would have cut my losses and gave the standard promise to myself to do it later. It was the perfect recipe for procrastinating headache late at night and dead tired. But my requirement was so easy that I decided to do a single polling and then quit instead exercise for 40 minutes. I was astonished. It was one of those moments when I realized how powerful this strategy really WAAS. So if your five minute rule is to run for five minutes every day, but you feel tired and you feel heavy resistance to do even that, you can make it smaller by deciding to leave your house and just run for 30 seconds. Or make your requirement for success even smaller and decide just to put on your running shoes, step out of your house and run for five seconds. If your five minute rule involves doing the yoga session and you're resisting, pull out your yoga mat and just lay down on your stomach. However, these may not be necessary at most times, since your goals air already super small and easy. But remember, you have the many rule in your arsenal for times of extreme resistance. Can you see how the five minute rule and many rule can make you feel unstoppable? Can you see why I'm confident that these two systems cannot Nearly anyone cure their procrastination. If I can take action in these circumstances when I have weak willpower and tired and lazy, then this strategy is a good one. Look at the five minute rule or the mini rule as your days requirement. These air action steps you must get done, but they only take a few minutes or even seconds total to do. After that, you could do anything you want, whether it's bonus reps or other activities. It's completely flexible to fit your current life. But it's the crowbar of motivation because it can create a snowball effect that leverages small action steps in your life into something much bigger. 7. Your 5-Minute Rule: your five minute rule. Hi. In this session, you're going to install your very own five minute rule. And remember, if even a five minute long action step feels too hard to accomplish for you right now, scale it down to an even smaller requirement. A many actions. I recommend that you get a pad and pen now to go through these and write down your plans and strategy. Enough talk. Let's move to action. This chapter will show you how to create habits that last a lifetime. Step one. Choose your action right down the habit. You'd like to have it some point. It should be a full size habit for now. For example, exercise five times a week. Consistently study 90 minutes per day, five times per week. Run for an hour, four times. Okay, pause the video and do the exercise. When you're done, come back and start to design your very own five minute rule. See soon. At this point, you should have an action plan and full sized habits to pursue. It may be related to fitness, yoga, running, studying, cleaning your house, working on your side business, whatever you decide to pursue. And now we're gonna many fine. Step two. Make your action steps stupid. Small. The reason we're gonna make our action steps stupid small is because they tend to cost us the least amount of willpower. Every possible action, such as exercising for 20 or 40 minutes, has a will power requirement attached to it. If you're motivated, full of energy and in shape, a 20 minute workout session might not cost you much willpower. But when you're a little bit tired already and not feeling up to it, not only will you have less willpower, but the activity will cost more of it. And this is the reason starting is the hardest part. It's because it carries the brunt of the weight of the commitment. Once we start, we feel as if we need to finish our original intention to count it as a success. This is why we tend not to start a project that intimidates us. We'd rather not start if we won't finish. This is why the five minute rule is so easy and effective. The total requirement is so small, there's no risk of quitting too early by starting small and entering the reality of doing the work, your mind will see that one small step is not as difficult as it first seemed and that taking the next step isn't difficult either. Touch your nose right now. I'm serious. Did you feel any resistance to touching your nose? I bet you didn't. You were able to touch your nose because the resistance you felt was not stronger than your willpower. This example is one of the most basic exercises in willpower. If you can force yourself to touch your nose, then you'll have success with this program. I'm not joking. This course exist because I did one. My ability to complete a 40 minute workout and my improved physique resulted from that same pullup. I exercise now almost every single day. That one pull up was the first step that led to all of these great changes in my life. A mistake we make when setting goals is not taking into account that our motivation and energy levels are gonna fluctuate dramatically. Way Assume that our current motivation and energy levels could be preserved or reactivated when the time comes to act, roll up our sleeves and get the job done. Everyone has off days that means your willpower to do the things that you need to do will be lower, too. This strategy makes us resort to things like motivational videos, articles, self prep talks and other short term boosts. But what ensues is a losing struggle against a brain that doesn't want to change. Your brain is designed to protect you from doing things that are uncertain, scary or new. But this time we're going to trick our brain and win the motivation game. My rule is too many. Find my desired action steps until it sounds ridiculous. Let the habit you're trying to develop. Take no longer than a few minutes a day in the beginning, like working on your side business for five minutes or cleaning your kitchen for five short minutes. You have one step to take each day. It will take no time. But you should also make it so simple that it will be impossible for you to say no. And when something sounds stupid small, your brain will see it as non threatening and so simple that it will be impossible for you to say no. Okay, pause the video again and do the exercise. So instead of saying You have to do a full workout. We'll just say that you have to exercise for five minutes. Or, if you feel heavy resistance, use the mini role and only require yourself to do a single polling as you have energy. In this scenario, this isn't a big deal. And once you start, you're going to find the motivation. Kick in most the time. As Dan Pink notes in his best selling book on motivation Drive, nothing motivates you better than seeing progress. In short, don't wait for inspiration. Just start doing whatever it is you do. Action is first motivation. Second, in the last section, we discussed how your ability to control your behaviour depends on how difficult your brain perceives the task. And when you start super small, the perceived difficulty and willpower cost drop drastically. You see, once you take the first step, your brain is forced to calculate the true difficulty of taking action instead of a biased lazy brain, projecting it to be tortuous. If you've ever found yourself thinking it wasn't so bad afterwards, you're already familiar with this phenomenon. Don't view an hour's worth of work as something where you need to find the motivation to make it through that entire hour. In most cases, you only need the motivation for those 1st 5 minutes. The hardest part is showing up. The other 55 minutes usually goes by pretty easy. In many ways, it's harder not to do a single push up than to do one challenges so easy that your pride enters the equation. I may be stubborn and exhausted right now, but come on, I can do that. I encourage you to frequently remind yourself of the absurdity of not being able to meet your short five minute requirements. 8. What To Do When You Feel Resistance To Do More: what to do when you feel resistance to do more. The five minute motivation strategy addresses the first instance of internal resistance by requiring small steps to start and by making the total requirement to easy to found. It keeps you from getting overwhelmed and racing back to your old routines. But once you start, there's another wave of resistance. Based on my experience, the second level of resistance is shattered completely after you've taken the first step. This is especially true after you started practicing the system. But before you get started, you'll need to overcome the resistance from your brain. This type of resistance isn't a mystery. It's a subconscious conflict with your typical behavior. Your brain can be tricked into not resisting the first step, but it's still knows what it wants when you attempt to do more. So when the first step isn't enough to break the resistance, take another. Your brain doesn't care to defend against small steps on Lee a big drastic change by changing slowly and taking it one step at a time. You're playing by your own brains rules. So when I kept setting small five minute requirements, my brain accepted it But once I thought about adding even a 10 minute chunk to my small workout requirement, my brain said No, absolutely not. Watch TV, you're grounded. So after finishing my five minute requirement, I decided to set up my floor mat. Brain accepted that. Then I decided to lay down Brain accepted. Then I decided to do a single push up. Three minutes later, my shoulders were ablaze. You know the rest. I worked out for another 10 minutes, and it felt incredibly amazing to succeed so easily. So if you're ever in a situation where you'd like to do more than your minimum requirement , simply continue to use small steps. And his Navy SEAL combat veteran Brent Gleeson, explains, The way you trick your mind to keep going when the finish line is far off in the distance is to divine your goal into tiny tasks, then just focus on the task that's right in front of you. For a Navy seal, this could mean just focusing on running until they crossed the bridge a couple miles away , then running until they get to the top of the hill, then running until they cross the river, and so on. trick your brain into taking action by breaking your big goals into tiny tasks and then focusing on the task that's right in front of you. After all, For example, it's hard to get your mind to accept that it has to work out for a year, but you can trick it into thinking that it only has to do a single push up. 9. The Key to Long Term Motivation: the key to long term motivation. Hi, and welcome to Session number seven. In this session, I'll show you the simple formula that allows you to leverage and focus your energy and stay motivated in the long run, even during tough times. Let's get going. Have you ever started a fitness program and then quit If you answered? Yes, you're not alone. Many people start fitness programs, but they may stop when they get bored. They don't enjoy it or results come too slowly. The truth is that even when people have the best of intentions and the willpower to set out and do something grand without an effective plan, they stumble and are more likely to fail. In life, we're told the dream big reach for the stars. Go for the gold. Well, I think everyone would agree that having big aspirations is admirable, not to mention inspiring. You should take a more calculated approach when setting fitness goals. Remember that you want to set yourself up for success and not for burnout. Now it turns out that motivation is a battle of the mind, and according to research, what drains are long term motivation the most is the battle that appears between the perception of your strength relative to your task. Researchers call this subjective fatigue. Subjective fatigue depends on many factors, and a big one is how you see yourself stacking up against your goal. You see, when you confront something that's going to require you to change your behavior, you basically come face to face with the gap between who you are right now and the future person you want to be. And sometimes when you see how big that gap is, it's overwhelming. This is subjective fatigue in the real world, the amount of work that it's going to take to close the gap suddenly feels insurmountable. The reason why you feel insecure is because you're starting to focus too much on your goal , how much you're going to have to do, and that's overwhelming. A recent study found that our imaginations air so powerful that they can change what we physically see and here in the real world. So it's not at all a stretch to think that expecting a heavy workload can impact our energy levels to the important distinction between process, orientation and goals and why you may be unknowingly setting yourself for failure. A problem with goals, especially big goals, is that they can seem overwhelming and amorphous. For example, AH goal of starting your own successful startup is motivated until you realize how hard it is to do. And then you have no idea where to start. And even if you do figure out where to start, you quickly grasp how far you have to go both figuratively and literally. Any acute progress seems trivial. Ironically, focusing on such a goal can demoralize, de motivate and ultimately detach you from the steps you need to take today to accomplish it. Personally, I found that people often get down on themselves because of unrealistic or poorly planned goals. Their goals are so big, there's so distant they require a 1,000,000 little steps in between. And each of those little steps is an opportunity to fail. You see, when my goal is large, my subjective fatigue worsens. This is logical as the mind looks ahead to the upcoming work and perhaps feels the impact early now. This isn't to say that you should completely disregard goals. Goal setting conserved as an effective steering mechanism, a North star to shoot for. But after you set a goal. The smarter approach is to learn to embrace the process. It's best to shift your focus from the goal itself to the process that gives you the best chance of achieving it and to judge yourself based on how well you execute that process. Focusing on the process means breaking down a goal into its component parts and concentrating on those parts. It's an incredible focusing mechanism that keeps you in the here and now, even during the pursuit of distant goals. Australian Olympic swim team coach Blocked volley says this too big, distant goals. It's easy for athletes to get tunnel vision and get caught up on the end goal without paying attention to the process. Along the way, I find those who lose sight of the small steps and processes are those who lose motivation when things aren't going as planned. And listen to Dr Fred Gross, the mentor to some of the highest performing individuals in the world, who says that we can only commit to actions, not results. Easy actions are under our control. You can control whether you go to the gym, whether or not you healthy meals or not, but you can't control whether you lose £2 this week. If you lose £2 this week is only dependent on the actions or inactions you take. So the result is merely a by product of a series of actions that you take. It's literally impossible to commit to a goal. Yet most of us have been thought to do this over time, and then we wonder why it never really worked. So what we want to do instead is commit to actions and focus on the process, like committing the actions. You know that if you take consistent action over a prolonged period of time, the goal will be a natural byproduct of your actions. For example, if you consistently exercise for X amount of minutes per day over time, you'll lose acts amount of weight. Personally, I noticed that when I focused on the process and my goal became to take action for just five short minutes, my subjective fatigue shrunk. In fact, I have plenty of energy to exercise for just five short minutes, and the thought that I could easily do something, although small, was energizing, and even when I've been exhausted, I've still felt sufficiently energized to just do my personal mini rule. A single push up and this mindset can be applied to any goal from starting your own business. Cleaning your kitchen, losing £20 of belly fat, finishing college. You name it. And that's how you go from a couch potato to a super achiever. You temporarily ignore the fact that you need to work for X amount of hours to achieve your goal and focus on only working for five minutes today. And since that goal is much easier to achieve, you'll feel a sense of accomplishment once it's complete intern that creates the extra motivation you need to achieve your ultimate goal. 10. Final Words And The 3 Critical Rules You Can't Afford to Break: final words on your workout journey. Welcome to session number eight Way made it In this session. You're going to learn how to apply what you've learned in five minute motivation and the three critical rules you can't afford to break to make your five minute rule a success. Rule number one. Be happy with all progress, drop high expectations and never, ever sheet. There are a lot of ways to cheat the five minute motivation system. The first most common way to cheat is to give yourself a small goal, such as studying for one hour per day, but secretly require that you study more than an hour. No, no and three times no. The reason you need to be really, really careful not to do this is because each additional weight you put on yourself is going to require more willpower to meet. Am I saying you should never exceed your minimum requirement? Of course not. I'm saying you can exceed your minimum requirement if it comes naturally and not you trying to force it. If you want to do more but feel resistance, set additional small requirements after your five minute rule or your many rules. Look it's helpful. They have generally high expectations for yourself because it increases your ceiling. A self efficacy study showed that you will never be in a good shape if you don't believe you can be in good shape. Reason why this happens is not that you've had an increase in belief that you could pull it off, but because of your willingness to try increased. If you never try to get in good shape, it's not gonna happen. High expectations, however, such as running 10 miles a day, are best avoided. A problem you're going to run into is the secret desire to increase your targets. Despite writing down your five minute action plan, your brain might pick up on how, for the last 20 days you've actually worked for 40 minutes, not five. A personal example. From the early days, your brain is always going to register behavior, not the intention. Subconsciously, overachievement can set a new expectation in your brain, one that carries all the weight and pressure of the typical goals you've set in the past. You know, the ones that didn't work, so it's important for you to keep reminding yourself that you haven't made any changes to your daily goals. Your daily goal remains a childlike, simple five minute actions down, but you are not allowed to feel guilty or like a failure. If you take action for only five minutes, five minutes is success period. This cannot be overstressed, because if you get this wrong, then going through this program is a waste of your time. Your ability to keep your goal small on paper and in your mind is the only foundation on which all the benefits, power and advantages of this technique recipe. If it Any time you feel president to meet your goal, check your mind for hidden requirements. Here are simple questions you can answer. Are you really shooting for your five minute rule? Or your many rule? Or, as your target grown, refuse bigger goals? Because it's at this moment that you'll gone from fighting against your brain to joining forces with. And discouragement is very rare within the five minute rule when compared with other motivational programs and goal setting methods. What can stop you from succeeding if all you have to do is just one single pulling open your textbook or turn on your computer and guess what it doesn't matter at all that your goal is small. You'll soon be hitting bigger targets if you have the same experience that I had. But please, please don't let that raise your expectations. Expect little, and you'll have the strong desire to do more. Life becomes very exciting when you realize the power of just getting started. And, yes, you'll realize you had plenty of motivation all along. It was only dormant until you got started. Rule number two. If you feel strong resistance, back off and go smaller. Conventional wisdom tells us that we've got to push through strong feelings of resistance. Well, that's clearly not working. We've already learned that will powers a limited source of energy. And if you try to push beyond your means now, it means you're going to crash and burn later. And if you think that you could just do it later as well, then you're not taking into account that you might not have enough desire or willpower to do it later. Imagine this scenario. You're at home and you want to exercise, but you really don't feel like you feel intense resistance. What do you do in this scenario? you don't want to fight your brain. If you can trick it into doing things your way. Suggest progressively smaller and smaller tests until the resistance you feel is minimal. If your goal is to work out of the gym scale back to requiring yourself to drive to the gym , say it's really bad and the best you could do is open your closed door. Next, pick up your workout clothes and put them on this sounds stupid. You That's great when it sounds stupid. Here on the right path, these childlike, stupid small steps slide under the brains radar, and before your brain catches on, you'll be on a treadmill at the gym. Rule number three. The Power of Small Steps The good news is that even if you burn yourself out, solution for taking action despite burnout is stupid. Small steps burn out Is willpower exhaustion? It happens when people force themselves to do too much for too long. But as you lie exhausted on your couch, you can appeal to your brain and say, Hey, could we just do one push up right now? After that, you might get motivated to do more, or you could set a few more of these super small steps. If you think the strategy sounds completely ridiculous, it's because you think you can do more. Your ego is telling you that you're better than having to break tasks down into small steps . But every giant accomplishment is made of very small steps, anyway. And to take them one at a time like this is not week but precise. Before I did the first pull up of my five minute workout, I felt above doing it. I thought that exercising for five minutes was worthless, but when it help me, exercise for 40 minutes changed my mind. And what makes the five minute rule and the mini roll great is that you'll never have an excuse to start. You'll never fear failure, and you'll never feel guilty. Even if you run out of will. Power requirement is so small that you could always find a way to get it done. There has never been a time when my willpower was so weak that I couldn't perform just one single pullup. Never. So try this out and see for yourself how you could be unstoppable with this strategy. Keep using the five minute rule and many rules in your life, and you'll continue being motivated to achieve your wildest, most desired goals. And whenever you feel resistance to taking any action, make it smaller, stupidly smaller. Problem solved. Thank you for going through this course with me. I look forward to hearing about all your success stories, most of which I'm sure will be even more exciting than my own. I hope you've gotten a lot from this course, and if you need some more help or have a particular question, then feel free to contact cheers. 11. Q Invitation: And finally, if you have any remaining questions regarding this course whatsoever, or if you feel that you need personalized help with regard to your unique situation that feel free to email me at hello dot brian bolt at gmail dot com, or send me your questions through Facebook Messenger at m, not me. Slash Ask Brian Bold. You can also follow me on Facebook at facebook dot com slash Ask Brian Bold. Imagine we both have a private conversation. What two questions. Would you ask me? Where do you feel stuck? What's your biggest frustration? What's the biggest problem you're facing? What is it specifically that you want to achieve or get What's the ideal outcome or result that you'd like to achieve? Your situation and success are important to me, and I will be more than happy to answer all your remaining questions. Please bear in mind that I get emails from all over the world, so it may take a couple days to hear back for me. Cheers, Brian