 There are quite a lot of things one can do in 5 minutes. By taking a quick look online, scanning through people's lists of ideas and things they say they can do in 5 minutes, I was quite surprised by their creativity. Apparently in 5 minutes one can draw a sketch, do a quick workout session, clean a room, throw a load of laundry in the washing machine, do a stretch or a meditation session, read a few pages from a book, practice an instrument and much, much more. There are quite a lot of great people throughout history doing that as well and by doing that, I mean squeezing each second out of their day. Theodore Roosevelt raced through his day. Letters were answered upon receipt, a lifetime total of 150,000. He's the writing-est president in American history. So he's an intellectual. He read a book a day, sometimes three books in a day when he had some leisure. And even more present-day individuals such as the almighty E.M. And this is why I kind of said to myself why not replicate what the greats are doing. Because I oftentimes find myself being quite stuck in a rut. And that is because each day I'm trying to generate new ideas and work on tiny projects I'm excited about. And all of this can sometimes be draining. And sometimes I'm not feeling it. And I have to constantly remind myself that motivation is actually a myth. And action is really the thing that triggers motivation in the first place. And on the physical level, as the reminder is actually something happening inside my head, I'm using tiny time blocks, tiny deadlines tied to my tiny assignments to get the ball rolling. And nowadays I'm experimenting with five-minute timers. Now every time I'm facing a problem that's bugging me in the background, I would sit, take a piece of physical or digital paper and start generating raw random ideas on how to fix that particular problem. And the reason why I'm giving myself only five minutes is pretty simple. And that is because the time constraint kind of forces me to stop analyzing each tiny idea. And I'm oftentimes guilty of being a super analyzer, a very harsh critical thinker. And this is why my mind will have to juggle with two engines running in the same time. The first engine is the one that generates the ideas. And the second one is the one that filters the ideas. And again, the reason I'm giving myself this type of time constraint is because I want to kind of force the second engine to stop. The five-minute block is dedicated to the idea generation engine, to the creative flow. As we oftentimes get through our day mentally complaining about the impossibility of solving a particular problem, without actually taking a step back and spending something like five minutes really being focused and thinking about how we can solve that problem. And in terms of the tools I use to track the five minutes, you have plenty of options out there as well. But I will list just a few of them. If you're using a computer, you can simply use the default timer and set an alarm. Or install a browser plugin to help you with that as well. Or you can even go online and type in something like set a timer. And Google will show you a decently minimalist five-minute one. I also do enjoy technology. And sometimes I'm using the Google HomePod or Google Home Device just to track the five minutes as well. So I can say something like, hey Google, set a timer for five minutes. All right, five minutes, starting now. Yeah, and it simply works like that. And this one can be quite useful because you cannot see the seconds dropping like on a regular timer and thus eliminating one more thing to think about. And if you want to get physical, you can get a kitchen timer and use that instead. So you set it up and you start your idea generation process. No distractions, no phone, no mindless surfing, just you, a piece of paper and a time constraint. And I believe it can be quite useful to start experimenting with this yourself as setting up deadlines and time constraints can actually be a great support pillar for getting things done. And I also learned that idea generation process is sometimes quite hard for technical people. And there's a common misconception running young and wild and free out there where technical people, especially those involved in areas such as maths or physics or computer science are sort of brainwashed by school and society and start telling themselves that they are not creative. That creativity is actually a game of a writer, a painter or a musician. And that hard sciences in general are not related to being creative. But instead what they really need is hardcore research, work and years and years of grind. And this is actually a cultural phenomenon. Do you remember being a toddler, taking a somehow super basic art class in kindergarten where the teacher asked the class to draw a tree? And you were the one who drew something like this. But what I believe is that there's no such thing as a non-creative view, a non-creative person. And while research hasn't yet concluded scientific means to determine if a person is creative or not, for now I think that creativity is a skill that one can practice and learn. And historically speaking, creativity has always been a tricky subject to research. But apparently there is indeed a correlation between being intelligent and being creative. But really humans are creative by nature. This is what allowed us to discover the fire and create great shows like Rick and Morty. And getting ideas out of our brains is sometimes a twisted, messy process because we all have days when we suffer from the lack of creativity juice. But generating rough, sometimes unpolished, sometimes crazy ideas in something like five minutes can be a really interesting thing and exercise to do. And I believe it's also cool to sort of like incorporate it into your default state of being. Sort of like using speed to incorporate everything on paper. Also like learning how to just type faster so that you can generate ideas faster. And also the speed with which you manipulate your computer or your physical notebook and also it doesn't matter what type of timer you want to use. And I used to be guilty of this myself, getting stuck within the paradox of choice trying to find the perfect browser extension that would allow me to start tracking my time faster or optimizing my Google Home or Apple Watch. And it doesn't have to be five minutes. I mean you can really go with something like three minutes or six minutes or seven minutes. What really works for you actually. But what I found for myself is that the time constraint should be really low. So give it a try and just like let me know in the comment section below what type of ideas you can generate in five minutes and also what type of things you can do in five minutes. And I want to conclude this short video essay with a quote I like and I really enjoy that goes something like this. Automation over a long enough period of time will replace every non-creative job. And that's great news. That means that all of our basic needs are taken care of. And what remains for us is to be creative. Which is what every human really wants.