January 14, 2025 • 15 mins
This episode explores the transformative power of the two-minute rule for managing everyday tasks and building effective habits. By tackling small tasks immediately and gradually incorporating new habits, listeners can experience mental clarity and enhanced satisfaction in their daily lives.
• Overview of the two-minute rule and its benefits
• The mental weight of uncompleted tasks
• Strategies for using the two-minute rule effectively
• Insights from James Clear's "Atomic Habits"
• The importance of building habits in small increments
• Exploring the role of dopamine in motivation and task completion
• Encouragement to take action and prioritize small tasks
If today’s episode resonated, you’ll love Brave Enough Today—my weekly newsletter for anyone learning to trust themselves again. Subscribe here: https://substack.com/@superawesomeyou
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello and welcome to Super Awesome Runner.
My name is Sam.
I'm the host of the show on theSuper Awesome Mix podcast
network.
You can find more of thisshow's content and connect
directly with me at SuperAwesome Runner on Instagram and
on threads.
I had a goal this month ofreaching 125 followers and I'm
happy to report at the time ofthis recording, I'm at 114,
(00:24):
maybe a couple more, which isgreat.
I'm really proud of myself.
It's been a lot of fun on thereand connecting with people and
just joining the runnerconversation on threads, which
is it is thriving.
Let me tell you, there are alot of runners and, as you've
probably figured out, we alllove talking about running and
here we are with me talkingabout it and, hopefully, you
(00:47):
listening and enjoying Today.
I am going to take a little bitof time to talk about the
two-minute rule.
There's actually a couple oftwo-minute rules that come to
mind and they are bothincredibly helpful little bits
of information to use throughoutyour day and your life.
So one of the two minute rulesis known, as you know, this idea
(01:08):
that if you can do something inunder two minutes, you should
do that thing, because if youdon't, what you end up doing is
leaving a task open in your mind, and our brains really don't
like open tasks because theywill hold on to it, whether
consciously or subconsciously,and it ends up being truly an
open thread.
(01:28):
You know, talk about threadshere.
This is something that ends upopening in your mind and being
held there for however long.
It is that you need to do thisthing.
It's very similar to anexperience you might have just
in your everyday life.
Let's say that there is a boxyou need to collapse and take
out your recycling and you keeplooking at it and you walk by it
(01:49):
, maybe 20 times a day, you know, or maybe 100 times.
Wherever this box is like, it'sin your home somewhere and you
see it and every single time youwalk by it, you're like I
really need to collapse this boxand take it outside.
What ends up happening is thatthat becomes truly a mental
weight on your brain.
Your brain has logged away thatthis is something you need to
do.
Every single time you see thebox, you process it.
(02:11):
You know your visual cortex,like your eyes see, it, reports
to your visual cortex.
Your visual cortex connectsinto your memory system and your
memory is like oh, I haveidentified this box.
This is the box that I need tobreak down and take out to
recycling.
Then that pings your consciousthought of like hey, you should
really do that thing.
You still haven't done it.
And the fact that you haven'tdone it can actually create a
(02:32):
sense of you know, a littleminiature nano sense of despair,
because the longer that youdon't do it, the more you feel
like you're kind of just failingat not doing this thing.
You can imagine that throughoutyour entire day there might be
a lot of versions of cardboardboxes that you need to break
down.
It might be a cardboard box, itmight be that you haven't made
the bed yet, it might be thatyou need to wash the dishes, it
(02:53):
might be that you have to payyour taxes, it might be that
you've got to do laundry, and soon.
There can be a lot of thesetasks that open up.
So the two minute rule the firstone really is this idea of
shutting down open tasks becausethey really can weigh on you
both emotionally and mentallyover time.
So if it's going to take youand I bet it would less than two
(03:14):
minutes to break the box down,take it out to recycling, you
should just do it then and there, because then it's completely
wiped from your memory and yourbrain is no longer storing that.
It's also no longer a visualpiece of information that your
brain and your visual cortexneeds to process, because it's
just gone right.
You've done the thing andyou've moved on, and I'm willing
to bet that you have nomemories of all the number of
(03:36):
boxes in your life that you'veever collapsed and taken out for
recycling, because, honestly,unless something notable
happened on that trip, yourbrain has no reason to save that
information.
It's just garbage information,quite literally in this case.
And so the two minute rule inthat regard is to just help you
lighten your mental load,because our life is filled with
(03:56):
two minute tasks.
Identify something you need todo and you can just do it right
then, and there you are saving aton of mental strain in the
near future for you, or possiblylong term future, depending on
how long you don't do this thing.
So that's the first two minuterule.
(04:17):
The second two minute rule comesfrom James Clear, the author of
Atomic Habits, excellent bookif you've not read it.
He also has a great newsletterthat my friend and I really like
because he always shares quotesin there and they can be kind
of devastating truths.
We always laugh about that.
We will highlight a quote fromthe newsletter and just be like,
oh my gosh, we got totallycrushed today, in a good way, of
(04:38):
course.
It's a good way to be crushedAbsolutely.
So the second two minute ruleis this idea of habit formation,
because ultimately that's whatthat book is about.
It's difficult to start a newhabit.
We've talked about habitformation on this podcast.
It really is difficult to startsomething new, especially when
(04:59):
that new thing that you want tostart is going to take you a
long time.
So, for example, in running,let's say you want to start a
warm-up routine before you gofor a run.
This is actually me speakingfrom experience.
I used to never warm up.
I would just like put on myclothes, head out the door and
run.
And no surprises, over a periodof time I started to get
injured because of that.
(05:20):
It's hard to go from beingeffectively cold in your body to
, all of a sudden, everythingfiring and supporting you, and
running is a very physicallydemanding sport on your body.
So be kind and you know, warmup it's going to, it's going to
really, really help you.
But I, you know, had heard aboutlike five minute warm up, 10
(05:41):
minute warm ups, and my brainjust could not wrap itself
around taking five to 10 minutesbefore a run, you know, to warm
up why?
Because I was excited to gorunning, and getting dressed on
its own can sometimes take alittle bit of time.
Getting your keys, your phone,just basically getting prepared
at all can take already five to10 minutes.
(06:02):
And when you're in the morningespecially, you know you've got
things to do.
You need to get ready for workright afterwards.
You can't fathom taking anotherfive to 10 minutes to warm up
your body.
You're just kind of like mybody's going to be forced into a
warm up.
Who cares?
So his two minute rule suggeststhat don't start a new warm up
routine taking five to 10minutes.
(06:23):
You might actually even not dotwo minutes.
You might do a 20 second warmup.
So it might be that you'vegotten 100% ready.
You've got keys on hand, youknow your phone in your pocket
If you're listening to music,you've got it queued up and your
headphones are on.
Before you do anything, you'relike I'm going to set a 20
second timer, I'm going to warmup for 20 seconds and you swing
your legs and you raise yourcalves and you just loosen up
(06:45):
for 20 seconds.
Your alarm goes off.
You're like great warm up doneand you head out the door.
20 seconds of warm-up is notreally going to warm up your
body.
That's not the point, though.
For these early things.
The point is that you arebuilding the habit of pausing
right before you start runningand taking a little bit of time
to engage your muscles and startto warm them up.
The 20 seconds is just lowenough that you can add on 20
(07:12):
seconds of random movements and,by the way, you should really
look up dynamic stretchingbefore a run and pick out a
couple that you think you coulddo in like 20 or 30 seconds.
Don't just, you know, wiggleyour body randomly.
I don't think that's going todo much, but the point is like
you can convince yourself tospend 20 or 30 seconds much
easier than you can convinceyourself to spend 10 minutes
Over time.
(07:32):
What you're doing there is youare training your new habit that
, when you go for a run, youpause right before you start
running and you spend some timewarming up.
The trick comes that, over aperiod of time, of doing that it
is much easier to take that 30seconds to a minute and then
maybe that minute to two minutesand then eventually you get a
(07:54):
warm-up routine that is five to10 minutes long and is very
appropriate for any distance run.
Maybe even shorten it forshorter distances and you
increase it for your long runs,like I did.
But now I'm happy to report Iliterally have a very involved
10 minutes, sometimes even 15minute warmup routine, and I
never would have imagined havingthat, you know, a year or two
(08:15):
years ago, because truly thethought of even warming up for a
minute was beyond me.
But now I enjoy it, I lookforward to it, I am so
programmed to do it that if Idon't do it I feel like I've
missed something, like it'sbecome so ingrained in my get
ready and go habit formationthat it'd be very similar to
(08:35):
that feeling of like oh no, I'veleft the house and I haven't
brushed my teeth Like that.
For me personally, that's anawful feeling.
All of a sudden my mouth tastesso bad and all I need to do is
get to a toothbrush.
Or if I can't, I'm going to gobuy some mints or something or
grab some gum, because I don'tknow if you have that experience
, but it's just a terriblefeeling.
So that ended up happening forme with this.
(08:56):
Really, you know this moment ofthinking oh my goodness, I'm
out here running and I haven'twarmed up yet.
It just became very automatic.
So that is his two minute rule.
So, again, to review the twotwo minute rules are if
something's going to take lessthan two minutes, you should
just go ahead and do it, becauseyou're going to reduce your
mental load and mental fatigueover time.
The second two minute rule isthat you should focus on
(09:20):
introducing a new habit, twominutes at a time.
And again, it doesn't have toexactly be two minutes.
You could literally shrink itdown to 20 seconds, 30 seconds,
but the point is that you aretraining yourself to take a
little bit of time to dosomething, that you are training
yourself to take a little bitof time to do something and then
over time you can expand thatclock.
So you take it from two minutesto four to 10 to an hour,
(09:41):
because you know, whatever thecase may be, because you can
even imagine doing this withconvince yourself to start a
running habit or start aweightlifting habit.
Strength training is soimportant and will help you a
lot if you aren't already doingthat whenever you run.
And you know, convincingyourself to go and spend an hour
in a gym once a week, that's alot.
(10:02):
But convincing yourself to buysome weights and leave them
around your home and lift themfor two minutes every other day
or every three days, whateverthe case may be, you can
convince yourself to get thereand eventually it'll reach the
point where you're like okay,I've already got the weights in
hand.
Let me expand the routine.
Expand the routine and, beforeyou know it, you've built
strength training into yourrunning routine.
(10:23):
I bring these two up togethernot only because they're both
named the two minute rule, butbecause I think that you can use
these two in combination tochange your life.
Basically, two minutes at atime.
If you start to become theperson that sees things and
immediately acts on them, Iguarantee you you will feel like
(10:44):
a million dollars.
It's unbelievable.
There are streaks in my lifewhere I follow that rule
religiously and if I seesomething and I can just do it
right, then and there and I dotake care of it I end the day
feeling so satisfied.
I also feel much lighter andless fatigued, ironically right
Because I'm actually doing morework throughout the day, but the
(11:05):
fatigue doesn't set in becauseI'm not seeing the amount of
work that I need to do buildingup around me.
Instead, I'm just seeingnothing right and like nothing
is a beautiful thing.
If I walk into a room andthere's no open tasks for me, I
can just enjoy that room andenjoy my time in that room and
that is a beautiful thing.
(11:26):
So those weeks where I'm reallyfollowing that two minute rule
of just like, do the task, knockit out, do the task, knock it
out, I end the day feeling muchmore relaxed and happy because
I'm not fatiguing myself on.
Oh gosh, that's another thing Ihave to do.
Oh, that's another thing I haveto do.
(11:51):
Habit building of, you know, twominutes at a time, because I
think oftentimes they're verysimilar you might just end up
realizing you need to dedicate amorning out of every single
week where you break down boxesand take them to recycling.
You know, like Tuesday becomesrecycling day or Wednesday
becomes your weightlifting dayfor your strength training
program, and you've done thattwo minutes at a time and these
two things can really againbuild on each other and start to
(12:14):
dramatically change your life.
What's happening a little bit,you know, just a little dive
underneath the hood is basicallydopamine firing and making you
feel good about this stuff and,if you've probably heard all
over the internet, it is amotivational neurotransmitter.
It fires when it's trying toget you to do something or it is
(12:36):
happy that you've just donesomething, but basically it is
to try to get you to pull thelever.
Basically, I always bring upthe slot machine lever as a
great example of dopamineinaction, because you get the
random intermittent rewards.
You know you pull the lever,nothing happens.
Pull the lever, nothing happens.
Why are you doing that?
You're pulling it because youeventually assume that something
(12:58):
exciting will happen.
You are highly motivated tokeep pulling that lever because
you've seen or heard or havefirsthand experience that
sometimes when you pull thelever, you get a reward and like
money spits out of the machine.
So our lives are basically justus running around pulling levers
.
You know we reload Instagrambecause we were expecting to be
entertained.
We might also be expecting acomment or a like.
(13:21):
Those are all things that arebeing driven by dopamine telling
us like hey, search for thatreward, search for that reward.
A reward is, you know, on thepathway.
If you keep doing these actionsso by structuring your life to
where you are reprogramming,where you get your dopamine, you
(13:43):
can actually then get dopaminehits.
By putting away recycling, bydoing a strength training
program, by organizing yourlaundry every single night so
that it doesn't turn into amassive pile that you will never
tackle, all of those things endup kind of being a rewarding
behavior, and it's driven bydopamine.
So you know, that's kind of thebasis of making your bed in the
(14:03):
morning.
The idea is that, like you aretraining your brain first thing
in the morning of seeing an opentask, completing that task,
getting that little bit ofdopamine hit because you've done
a thing that you normally putoff doing, and then the idea is
that you're supposed to justsnowball from there, like what
else can I do today and whatelse can I accomplish?
So these two things in concertcan be very powerful.
(14:24):
They're not easy to do, though,because even two minutes of
something can sometimes feellike two minutes too much.
So tweak it, you know, bring itdown to 20 seconds if you have
to, bring it down to two secondsif you have to.
The whole idea is that youstart a habit and over time,
over a long period of time, thathabit will be life changing.
(14:44):
It's not going to change yourlife.
The day of the first time youbreak down a box and take it out
to recycling, you might feel alittle bit proud of yourself,
but your life is probably goingto be exactly the same.
If you start to do that everysingle day, every single week of
your life, for the rest of yourlife, you'll probably feel
pretty good about yourselfBecause now you realize, you
know you'll look back at thattime when you used to have tons
of boxes you never take, youknow have taken out.
(15:06):
And now they don't pile upanymore and you feel really good
about that.
And now they don't pile upanymore and you feel really good
about that.
That is this week's episode Ihope you enjoy.
If this is useful orinteresting or not, like hit me
up at superawesomerunner, onInstagram and on threads, as
I've mentioned at the top of theepisode.
I hope you continue to have asuper awesome week ahead.
I hope you stay safe and yourfamily and friends are safe.
(15:29):
With everything going on in theworld it is.
I've read a number of threadswhere it's like the seven-day
trial of 2025 is awful.
How do I not renew?
And I understand there's been alot going on, but we will
continue to work on ourselvesand in that way we can help
others and be there for them,because showing up for yourself
(15:49):
first is one of the best ways tothen show up for others.
So I hope you take care and Iwill see you next Tuesday.
Hello and welcome to Super Awesome Runner.
My name is Sam.
I'm the host of the show on theSuper Awesome Mix podcast
network.
You can find more of thisshow's content and connect
directly with me at SuperAwesome Runner on Instagram and
on threads.
I had a goal this month ofreaching 125 followers and I'm
happy to report at the time ofthis recording, I'm at 114,
(00:24):
maybe a couple more, which isgreat.
I'm really proud of myself.
It's been a lot of fun on thereand connecting with people and
just joining the runnerconversation on threads, which
is it is thriving.
Let me tell you, there are alot of runners and, as you've
probably figured out, we alllove talking about running and
here we are with me talkingabout it and, hopefully, you
(00:47):
listening and enjoying Today.
I am going to take a little bitof time to talk about the
two-minute rule.
There's actually a couple oftwo-minute rules that come to
mind and they are bothincredibly helpful little bits
of information to use throughoutyour day and your life.
So one of the two minute rulesis known, as you know, this idea
(01:08):
that if you can do something inunder two minutes, you should
do that thing, because if youdon't, what you end up doing is
leaving a task open in your mind, and our brains really don't
like open tasks because theywill hold on to it, whether
consciously or subconsciously,and it ends up being truly an
open thread.
(01:28):
You know, talk about threadshere.
This is something that ends upopening in your mind and being
held there for however long.
It is that you need to do thisthing.
It's very similar to anexperience you might have just
in your everyday life.
Let's say that there is a boxyou need to collapse and take
out your recycling and you keeplooking at it and you walk by it
(01:49):
, maybe 20 times a day, you know, or maybe 100 times.
Wherever this box is like, it'sin your home somewhere and you
see it and every single time youwalk by it, you're like I
really need to collapse this boxand take it outside.
What ends up happening is thatthat becomes truly a mental
weight on your brain.
Your brain has logged away thatthis is something you need to
do.
Every single time you see thebox, you process it.
(02:11):
You know your visual cortex,like your eyes see, it, reports
to your visual cortex.
Your visual cortex connectsinto your memory system and your
memory is like oh, I haveidentified this box.
This is the box that I need tobreak down and take out to
recycling.
Then that pings your consciousthought of like hey, you should
really do that thing.
You still haven't done it.
And the fact that you haven'tdone it can actually create a
(02:32):
sense of you know, a littleminiature nano sense of despair,
because the longer that youdon't do it, the more you feel
like you're kind of just failingat not doing this thing.
You can imagine that throughoutyour entire day there might be
a lot of versions of cardboardboxes that you need to break
down.
It might be a cardboard box, itmight be that you haven't made
the bed yet, it might be thatyou need to wash the dishes, it
(02:53):
might be that you have to payyour taxes, it might be that
you've got to do laundry, and soon.
There can be a lot of thesetasks that open up.
So the two minute rule the firstone really is this idea of
shutting down open tasks becausethey really can weigh on you
both emotionally and mentallyover time.
So if it's going to take youand I bet it would less than two
(03:14):
minutes to break the box down,take it out to recycling, you
should just do it then and there, because then it's completely
wiped from your memory and yourbrain is no longer storing that.
It's also no longer a visualpiece of information that your
brain and your visual cortexneeds to process, because it's
just gone right.
You've done the thing andyou've moved on, and I'm willing
to bet that you have nomemories of all the number of
(03:36):
boxes in your life that you'veever collapsed and taken out for
recycling, because, honestly,unless something notable
happened on that trip, yourbrain has no reason to save that
information.
It's just garbage information,quite literally in this case.
And so the two minute rule inthat regard is to just help you
lighten your mental load,because our life is filled with
(03:56):
two minute tasks.
Identify something you need todo and you can just do it right
then, and there you are saving aton of mental strain in the
near future for you, or possiblylong term future, depending on
how long you don't do this thing.
So that's the first two minuterule.
(04:17):
The second two minute rule comesfrom James Clear, the author of
Atomic Habits, excellent bookif you've not read it.
He also has a great newsletterthat my friend and I really like
because he always shares quotesin there and they can be kind
of devastating truths.
We always laugh about that.
We will highlight a quote fromthe newsletter and just be like,
oh my gosh, we got totallycrushed today, in a good way, of
(04:38):
course.
It's a good way to be crushedAbsolutely.
So the second two minute ruleis this idea of habit formation,
because ultimately that's whatthat book is about.
It's difficult to start a newhabit.
We've talked about habitformation on this podcast.
It really is difficult to startsomething new, especially when
(04:59):
that new thing that you want tostart is going to take you a
long time.
So, for example, in running,let's say you want to start a
warm-up routine before you gofor a run.
This is actually me speakingfrom experience.
I used to never warm up.
I would just like put on myclothes, head out the door and
run.
And no surprises, over a periodof time I started to get
injured because of that.
(05:20):
It's hard to go from beingeffectively cold in your body to
, all of a sudden, everythingfiring and supporting you, and
running is a very physicallydemanding sport on your body.
So be kind and you know, warmup it's going to, it's going to
really, really help you.
But I, you know, had heard aboutlike five minute warm up, 10
(05:41):
minute warm ups, and my brainjust could not wrap itself
around taking five to 10 minutesbefore a run, you know, to warm
up why?
Because I was excited to gorunning, and getting dressed on
its own can sometimes take alittle bit of time.
Getting your keys, your phone,just basically getting prepared
at all can take already five to10 minutes.
(06:02):
And when you're in the morningespecially, you know you've got
things to do.
You need to get ready for workright afterwards.
You can't fathom taking anotherfive to 10 minutes to warm up
your body.
You're just kind of like mybody's going to be forced into a
warm up.
Who cares?
So his two minute rule suggeststhat don't start a new warm up
routine taking five to 10minutes.
(06:23):
You might actually even not dotwo minutes.
You might do a 20 second warmup.
So it might be that you'vegotten 100% ready.
You've got keys on hand, youknow your phone in your pocket
If you're listening to music,you've got it queued up and your
headphones are on.
Before you do anything, you'relike I'm going to set a 20
second timer, I'm going to warmup for 20 seconds and you swing
your legs and you raise yourcalves and you just loosen up
(06:45):
for 20 seconds.
Your alarm goes off.
You're like great warm up doneand you head out the door.
20 seconds of warm-up is notreally going to warm up your
body.
That's not the point, though.
For these early things.
The point is that you arebuilding the habit of pausing
right before you start runningand taking a little bit of time
to engage your muscles and startto warm them up.
The 20 seconds is just lowenough that you can add on 20
(07:12):
seconds of random movements and,by the way, you should really
look up dynamic stretchingbefore a run and pick out a
couple that you think you coulddo in like 20 or 30 seconds.
Don't just, you know, wiggleyour body randomly.
I don't think that's going todo much, but the point is like
you can convince yourself tospend 20 or 30 seconds much
easier than you can convinceyourself to spend 10 minutes
Over time.
(07:32):
What you're doing there is youare training your new habit that
, when you go for a run, youpause right before you start
running and you spend some timewarming up.
The trick comes that, over aperiod of time, of doing that it
is much easier to take that 30seconds to a minute and then
maybe that minute to two minutesand then eventually you get a
(07:54):
warm-up routine that is five to10 minutes long and is very
appropriate for any distance run.
Maybe even shorten it forshorter distances and you
increase it for your long runs,like I did.
But now I'm happy to report Iliterally have a very involved
10 minutes, sometimes even 15minute warmup routine, and I
never would have imagined havingthat, you know, a year or two
(08:15):
years ago, because truly thethought of even warming up for a
minute was beyond me.
But now I enjoy it, I lookforward to it, I am so
programmed to do it that if Idon't do it I feel like I've
missed something, like it'sbecome so ingrained in my get
ready and go habit formationthat it'd be very similar to
(08:35):
that feeling of like oh no, I'veleft the house and I haven't
brushed my teeth Like that.
For me personally, that's anawful feeling.
All of a sudden my mouth tastesso bad and all I need to do is
get to a toothbrush.
Or if I can't, I'm going to gobuy some mints or something or
grab some gum, because I don'tknow if you have that experience
, but it's just a terriblefeeling.
So that ended up happening forme with this.
(08:56):
Really, you know this moment ofthinking oh my goodness, I'm
out here running and I haven'twarmed up yet.
It just became very automatic.
So that is his two minute rule.
So, again, to review the twotwo minute rules are if
something's going to take lessthan two minutes, you should
just go ahead and do it, becauseyou're going to reduce your
mental load and mental fatigueover time.
The second two minute rule isthat you should focus on
(09:20):
introducing a new habit, twominutes at a time.
And again, it doesn't have toexactly be two minutes.
You could literally shrink itdown to 20 seconds, 30 seconds,
but the point is that you aretraining yourself to take a
little bit of time to dosomething, that you are training
yourself to take a little bitof time to do something and then
over time you can expand thatclock.
So you take it from two minutesto four to 10 to an hour,
(09:41):
because you know, whatever thecase may be, because you can
even imagine doing this withconvince yourself to start a
running habit or start aweightlifting habit.
Strength training is soimportant and will help you a
lot if you aren't already doingthat whenever you run.
And you know, convincingyourself to go and spend an hour
in a gym once a week, that's alot.
(10:02):
But convincing yourself to buysome weights and leave them
around your home and lift themfor two minutes every other day
or every three days, whateverthe case may be, you can
convince yourself to get thereand eventually it'll reach the
point where you're like okay,I've already got the weights in
hand.
Let me expand the routine.
Expand the routine and, beforeyou know it, you've built
strength training into yourrunning routine.
(10:23):
I bring these two up togethernot only because they're both
named the two minute rule, butbecause I think that you can use
these two in combination tochange your life.
Basically, two minutes at atime.
If you start to become theperson that sees things and
immediately acts on them, Iguarantee you you will feel like
(10:44):
a million dollars.
It's unbelievable.
There are streaks in my lifewhere I follow that rule
religiously and if I seesomething and I can just do it
right, then and there and I dotake care of it I end the day
feeling so satisfied.
I also feel much lighter andless fatigued, ironically right
Because I'm actually doing morework throughout the day, but the
(11:05):
fatigue doesn't set in becauseI'm not seeing the amount of
work that I need to do buildingup around me.
Instead, I'm just seeingnothing right and like nothing
is a beautiful thing.
If I walk into a room andthere's no open tasks for me, I
can just enjoy that room andenjoy my time in that room and
that is a beautiful thing.
(11:26):
So those weeks where I'm reallyfollowing that two minute rule
of just like, do the task, knockit out, do the task, knock it
out, I end the day feeling muchmore relaxed and happy because
I'm not fatiguing myself on.
Oh gosh, that's another thing Ihave to do.
Oh, that's another thing I haveto do.
(11:51):
Habit building of, you know, twominutes at a time, because I
think oftentimes they're verysimilar you might just end up
realizing you need to dedicate amorning out of every single
week where you break down boxesand take them to recycling.
You know, like Tuesday becomesrecycling day or Wednesday
becomes your weightlifting dayfor your strength training
program, and you've done thattwo minutes at a time and these
two things can really againbuild on each other and start to
(12:14):
dramatically change your life.
What's happening a little bit,you know, just a little dive
underneath the hood is basicallydopamine firing and making you
feel good about this stuff and,if you've probably heard all
over the internet, it is amotivational neurotransmitter.
It fires when it's trying toget you to do something or it is
(12:36):
happy that you've just donesomething, but basically it is
to try to get you to pull thelever.
Basically, I always bring upthe slot machine lever as a
great example of dopamineinaction, because you get the
random intermittent rewards.
You know you pull the lever,nothing happens.
Pull the lever, nothing happens.
Why are you doing that?
You're pulling it because youeventually assume that something
(12:58):
exciting will happen.
You are highly motivated tokeep pulling that lever because
you've seen or heard or havefirsthand experience that
sometimes when you pull thelever, you get a reward and like
money spits out of the machine.
So our lives are basically justus running around pulling levers
.
You know we reload Instagrambecause we were expecting to be
entertained.
We might also be expecting acomment or a like.
(13:21):
Those are all things that arebeing driven by dopamine telling
us like hey, search for thatreward, search for that reward.
A reward is, you know, on thepathway.
If you keep doing these actionsso by structuring your life to
where you are reprogramming,where you get your dopamine, you
(13:43):
can actually then get dopaminehits.
By putting away recycling, bydoing a strength training
program, by organizing yourlaundry every single night so
that it doesn't turn into amassive pile that you will never
tackle, all of those things endup kind of being a rewarding
behavior, and it's driven bydopamine.
So you know, that's kind of thebasis of making your bed in the
(14:03):
morning.
The idea is that, like you aretraining your brain first thing
in the morning of seeing an opentask, completing that task,
getting that little bit ofdopamine hit because you've done
a thing that you normally putoff doing, and then the idea is
that you're supposed to justsnowball from there, like what
else can I do today and whatelse can I accomplish?
So these two things in concertcan be very powerful.
(14:24):
They're not easy to do, though,because even two minutes of
something can sometimes feellike two minutes too much.
So tweak it, you know, bring itdown to 20 seconds if you have
to, bring it down to two secondsif you have to.
The whole idea is that youstart a habit and over time,
over a long period of time, thathabit will be life changing.
(14:44):
It's not going to change yourlife.
The day of the first time youbreak down a box and take it out
to recycling, you might feel alittle bit proud of yourself,
but your life is probably goingto be exactly the same.
If you start to do that everysingle day, every single week of
your life, for the rest of yourlife, you'll probably feel
pretty good about yourselfBecause now you realize, you
know you'll look back at thattime when you used to have tons
of boxes you never take, youknow have taken out.
(15:06):
And now they don't pile upanymore and you feel really good
about that.
And now they don't pile upanymore and you feel really good
about that.
That is this week's episode Ihope you enjoy.
If this is useful orinteresting or not, like hit me
up at superawesomerunner, onInstagram and on threads, as
I've mentioned at the top of theepisode.
I hope you continue to have asuper awesome week ahead.
I hope you stay safe and yourfamily and friends are safe.
(15:29):
With everything going on in theworld it is.
I've read a number of threadswhere it's like the seven-day
trial of 2025 is awful.
How do I not renew?
And I understand there's been alot going on, but we will
continue to work on ourselvesand in that way we can help
others and be there for them,because showing up for yourself
(15:49):
first is one of the best ways tothen show up for others.
So I hope you take care and Iwill see you next Tuesday.
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