The other day I was going for a walk and listened to this podcast (the title catched my attention).

I had never heard about Mel Robbins, but after listening to the podcast I purchased her book “The 5 Second Rule” (not to be confused with the other “5 second rule”, which states that if you drop some food on the floor, and you pick it up after less than 5 seconds, you can eat it again safely).

The book is a bit repetitive (you can get the main idea by listening to the podcast, for free).

Apparently, when you want to do something but hesitate, that sends a message to your brain saying “hey, this might be dangerous/uncomfortable”, so your braing cooperates and gives you tons of excuses for not doing that thing.

So you have around 5 seconds to take action before your brain voice kicks in.

What the author suggests is the following: when you are about to do something that you know you SHOULD do (ie, get up from bed, have a difficult conversation, get to work, go to the gym, speak up in that meeting, talking to that guy/girl…) simply count down from 5 to 1 and do it. No excuses, allowed.

It sounds silly, but the thing is, it works. In fact, it has helped me get to write this post (before that I was doing some mindless browsing around Internet).

I counted mentally: 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, GO! and started writing this post.

It worked.

If you would like to know more, you can listen to her TED talk:

So where can you apply the 5 second rule in your life?

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