 Check this out if you procrastinate. So if you're someone who feels like they have lots of ideas about how they can improve their life, things they wanna do regarding getting fit, things they wanna do about starting that business, or things they wanna do about journaling, or traveling the world, or getting a raise, this video is for you. Hey guys, it's Alex Hine, let's jump in. Now there is always fundamentally one big problem when you want to improve your life. I can think back to myself in my earlier mid-20s where I had just moved back from living in China for about a year and a half, and I was really frankly back at Ground Zero. I had moved back in with my parents. I had no job. Most of my childhood friends had actually left. And so there I am living in Connecticut, little Alex unsatisfied with his life, completely dissatisfied I should say, because all of the quadrants of that pie of life were basically like crap. My health was okay. My finances were zero. I had no social belonging or social ties, and I wasn't even working. So really it was me sitting around my parents' house depressed and bored. And fundamentally I ran into the same problem that we always do, which is the gap. Meaning that any time in your life where there is a gap between where you are and where you want to be, you're faced with this dilemma, which is how do I actually fill that gap? How do I cross that castle? And at this exact moment is where the men are separated from the boys, as they say. At this exact moment is where most people are overwhelmed by one thing. Fatigue, because it is very difficult to work on five or 10 different parts of your life and actually achieve results simultaneously all at the same time. So what do you actually do to actually make progress towards all of these different quadrants when all you know that you really wanna do is procrastinate? Because you have this overwhelming pressure to try to make these things happen, but it just seems like too much. Now let's talk about the three minute rule. I shot this video a couple years ago, and it was really one of the first videos that I shot that went viral. And when you reach that level of the gap where you begin to procrastinate, let's say for example, what you've been trying to work on for years is getting in shape. And you know, if I just eat a little bit better, I eat a Mediterranean diet, I cook more at home, and I go to the gym maybe three or four days a week, or I go to a yoga class or a workout class, I know in a couple months I'm gonna be in a different body. But you wake up and you know, do I wanna just walk to my favorite coffee shop and maybe get a muffin there? That's a hell of a lot easier and more fun than sitting at home and cooking oatmeal and slicing an apple into it. And then in the afternoon, you know, all I got off work at five or 5.30, it's a hell of a lot easier just to go home or get dinner with your friends than it is to go to the gym and then get dinner with your friends after. So what do you do? The three minute rule. And here's what it is. If a task you've been trying to do, you are procrastinating on for more than a couple minutes, try to find the smallest way to do the task. So if today, what you're supposed to be doing was making that healthy meal or going to the gym and you've procrastinated for at least five minutes, then what you need to do is go do some of that task just for five minutes. Skip the full length thing. If what you promise yourself you do is journal about your life for 20 minutes every morning and you're like, eh, and it's been five minutes or three minutes, then just do it for five minutes instead of the full thing. If what you said you were gonna do is work on your business for an hour or two a night and it's been five minutes and you're still watching Selling Sunset, then oh, okay, we've reached that three minute threshold, I'm just gonna work on it for five minutes. So let me give you an example with journaling. Let's say you've watched a pretentious YouTuber like this guy named Alex, who talks about journaling a lot and you decide that, wow, maybe I should actually try to journal about my life and my goals every day. I mean, after all, there's a lot of people that have said it's worked for them. So you decide, okay, it's eight in the morning, I have 30 minutes before I have to get ready for work. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm just gonna sit down and journal about what I want, my goals, things that are working and things that aren't working. But a couple minutes in, you're still on your phone or maybe you're out walking your dog and you're like, let's just go for a walk and I'll flip through the news or social media. So it's been a couple minutes and you know, it's not really happening and chances are the goal was too big. So what I want you to do is, if you've procrastinated for at least three minutes, forget the whole goal and just do it for a couple minutes. So sit down and just write down, this is why I'm gonna use journaling in my life. You know, yesterday was okay, today here's what I'm really excited about, boom, that's your entry for the day. Because one thing I've seen to be true is that if you tell yourself, I'm going to be a perfectionist and do it right and if the majority of the time you're not doing it, then you're living a lie because five minutes a day of a habit is going to change your life more than the one hour habit you do once a week. Now I'm a die-hard believer in having a morning routine and a piece of that involves reading a self-growth book for about 10 or 20 minutes to have your mind focused on growth and what you can work on. You know, for example, a book I'm reading, Drive by Daniel Pink, I'm listening to it on audiobook and then I'm basically going back through all the little key points by using a service called short form, which really basically in one page shows what the key points are. You know, I can look at the one page summary to get really clear on what the essential ideas are that I can implement and sometimes that's honestly more useful than reading an entire book because over the course of a month, you forget what you've actually read. Now by joining through my link, shortform.com forward slash modern health monk, they'll actually give you five days of unlimited access and an additional 20% discounted annual subscription and that subscription basically gives you access to thousands of book guides for the price of one book a month. So you guys can check it out, the link right there and the first link in the bio. Another example, fitness is the classic one, right? Because working out four days a week, which is really what you need to substantially change your health in your body is not easy. That's a big discipline, that's four hours of your life. So let's say you said, you know what? I'm smart about this, Alex. I'm actually gonna do a little bit of a workout every morning. I'm gonna watch a yoga workout on the TV and I'm just gonna do it for like maybe 20 minutes, right? That's small, that's manageable. So again, you have your little breakfast, you have your toast and a cup of coffee. Now it's eight o'clock. You know, you have 30 minutes-ish before you have to get ready and then put on that yoga workout and you're just tired and you're a little bloated. And you know, you're like, ah, maybe I should just go to the bathroom, take a shower instead. But you know this rule, it's been about three minutes. You've been saying you're gonna do it and you're not doing it. So what do you do? Chunk it down to just doing a couple minutes of it. So instead you decide, all right, I'm just gonna lay down and do a couple of downward dogs, some sun salutations, a couple up dog and maybe just stretch out my back a little bit. And then you know what? You'll find that most of the time once you've started doing it, some days you may actually end up completing the habit of the ritual because you overcame that sort of activation energy, the resistance that it took to begin the ritual. One final example, let's say what you're working on is writing your book or writing anything. And you know that if I dedicate just an hour a day to writing this book, I can probably have written an entire book at the end of a year, right? So you know, okay, I'm gonna do it every night at 9 p.m. It's quiet, I have one hour, I can get this done. So 9 p.m. rolls around and you know what you're competing with? Sitting on Instagram on your phone in your bed and watching Selling Sunset on Netflix. So you're laying there in bed 9, 901, 902, 903, and you haven't written yet. So what do you do? The three minute rule, go back because you've procrastinated for at least three minutes, forget the fact that you're gonna write an hour a day and just say that you're gonna write a couple of notes tonight. You know, there was this chapter I wanted to write about my story with my dad as a kid or the story that happened to me in school. But I'm just gonna write out, you know, a couple more ideas for a table of contents. And it's maybe five or 10 minutes, but you know what, you actually got something done. So if you find yourself procrastinating in life, employ this three minute rule that if you find yourself procrastinating for more than a couple of minutes, forget the whole ritual, forget this perfectionist black and white thing you promised yourself and just do a couple of minutes of it because chances are sometimes you'll do the full ritual anyway. And even if you don't, daily ritual habits will outperform something you do once a week or once a month, anytime. Now, by the way guys, this is one of the actual journaling exercises I have as part of this free journaling worksheet, which is the link right below this video. So it's actually something that will help you figure out what little rituals do I have to do daily to achieve my wildest goals in life. So you can check that out. And a brand new announcement, which is I've actually just launched this new online portal full of courses to improve your life. Now, these courses are all into the bucket of how to design your dream life. It's one of my most popular videos with like five million views. So I figure why not create a whole series of courses that would be interesting to you. So this course is something you can see right below this video. The first one I've linked up is the strategy pages journaling program because journaling is one of those things that I do almost every day that has really changed the direction of my life. So you guys can always check that out right below this video. And then before you go, don't forget, I have another related video for you right there.