The 5-10-15 Method
How to get started on a task you've been avoiding
I recently had to tackle the beastly job of going through some accounting for an outside party that would end up taking me over 20 hours. (Had I been working steadily on it throughout the year like I “should have been doing”, it probably would have been a lot less.) The assignment had a deadline, and since I did not usually have more than a couple hours a week I can devote to work beyond child- and home-care tasks, I was pretty stressed out.
Needless to say, I did not want to face this task. I didn’t know how or where to start. Then I remembered the Pomodoro method. Work for 25 minutes, then take a 5-10 minute break.
But when I realized that I couldn’t bear the thought of doing 25—or even 15—minutes of this work, I decided to make it smaller. I set a timer for 5 minutes.
I can do an unpleasant, scary thing for five minutes.
When the 5-minute timer rang, I had found my entry point and was ready to do more. I hadn’t gotten very far, but far enough, to feel like I had found a groove enough to work a little longer. So then, I set the timer for 10 minutes. When the 10-minute timer rang, I set it for 15 minutes.
Painlessly, I accomplished 30 minutes of focused work on my project, as well as gained the confidence that I could continue to make progress in these incremental chunks.
I hope you give this strategy a try the next time you’re feeling intimidated by an undone task. Let me know how it goes!
I loooove this idea! I don't think I fully realized until reading this that the traditional pomodoro method doesn't always work great for me either, for the same reason! (25 minutes feels like an eternity when I'm setting out to do a dreaded/hard/boring/stressful task.) I'm about to give this a try!!
This is so helpful! I love the pomodoro method, but sometimes even 25 minutes is overwhelming, like you said! I like the idea of just starting with 5 minutes--totally manageable! Once I do get into the work, I struggle to stop--do you adhere pretty rigidly to the breaks if you are on a roll?