15-Minute Magic

Within the last week or two I have implemented a practice that has completely changed my daily life.  It is a “life hack” I heard about many years ago, but never tried, until a few weeks ago.  I applied it to my life in order to create more balance between my full-time job, coaching, writing, and family duties and it has worked wonders.  I soon realized this magical practice can even be applied to accomplishing your dreams, 15-minutes at a time.

If you are like me you probably have a laundry list of things to do (including laundry) and some days you aren’t sure how you can fit it all in, let alone make time for you to focus on the one big thing you really want to create in your life.  You also know that without that time and space, that thing may never manifest.

So how do you do it without locking yourself in a room for hours on end to finally make some headway?

You break it into 15-minute chunks.

I know you are saying that you can’t possibly get anything worthwhile accomplished in 15-minutes, but believe it or not, you can accomplish a lot in 15-minutes if you are totally focused on the task at hand.

Here’s how it works:

1. Select something from your to-do list that you just haven’t found the time to do.

   

2. Set a timer for exactly 15-minutes.
3. Get to work.
4. When the timer goes off, stop what you are doing and pat yourself on the back. You have just taken a tiny step toward accomplishing your goals.

Now, at this point if you are really on a roll and you have the time you can reset the timer and go for another 15-minutes and see where that gets you, or you may decide you want to do something else for 15-minutes.  The awesome thing about this practice is you can use it for anything. (If you are a parent, this works wonders with children especially when they have chores to do.)

Do you have some follow-up emails you have been meaning to send?  Some contacts you have been meaning to look up?  Need to research business cards/webpage designers/workshop ideas/need to contact that life coach you have been meaning to hire? Set your timer and go!

You may find some tasks work better with a 30-minute set up and that is ok too.  Feel free to mold this practice into something that works for you and your unique situation.

Using this practice allows you to take little steps toward accomplishing your dreams and the more you do it, the more inspired you become.  Soon you may find yourself setting the timer for much longer simply because you enjoy working on your dreams.  The key is to do a little bit everyday.

When you make your dreams a priority by doing a little each day, you will not only begin to feel better, but you will also see your dreams take shape before your very eyes.  Don’t believe me?  Try it and leave me a message in the comments below on how it worked for you.