Okay, truth be told… I didn’t wake up one morning magically motivated, organized, and ready to conquer every task on my list. If anything, I used to be the princess of procrastination.
I could postpone anything and everything from homework, emails, projects, even the things I actually wanted to do. And every time, I’d tell myself, “I’ll start later,” even though “later” kept turning into tomorrow… and then the next day… and then never.
But there was one day that changed everything for me. Not in a dramatic, lightning-strikes-the-roof kind of way, but in a quiet, simple moment where I finally realized something had to shift.
I remember sitting at my desk in 8th grade, staring at this one project I had been avoiding for weeks. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t scary. I just didn’t feel like doing it. But as I kept sitting there, I suddenly asked myself, “Why am I making life harder for myself?”
And that’s when it hit me.
I wasn’t procrastinating because the task was difficult. I was procrastinating because I had convinced myself that I needed to feel ready to start. And frankly? That feeling never comes. Motivation doesn’t show up first. Action does.
So that day, I decided to try something different.
Instead of waiting for motivation, I told myself, “Just do this for two minutes. That’s it.” And for some reason, the pressure lifted. Two minutes didn’t feel scary. Two minutes didn’t require perfection. Two minutes didn’t ask me to be the most focused person in the world. It just asked me to start.
So I did. And guess what?
Once I started, I kept going. What I thought would take two minutes turned into fifteen, then thirty, and before I knew it, the project I’d been avoiding for weeks was done. Just like that. It sounds so small, but it was honestly such an empowering moment.
After that day, I changed my entire approach. Instead of saying, “I’ll do it later,” I started saying, “I’ll do it for two minutes.” And it worked every single time. Because starting is the hard part. Once you start, your brain naturally wants to finish.
I also stopped putting pressure on myself to work in huge blocks of time. Instead, I broke things into tiny pieces. Not chapters… paragraphs. Not projects… steps. Not “study for three hours”… “open the notebook.”
The best part is that overcoming procrastination didn’t require a whole new personality or a dramatic lifestyle change. It just took one honest moment with myself and choosing to finally admitted that I was getting in my own way.
So if you’re in that place where everything feels overwhelming or you’re avoiding something because it feels too big, too far, or too annoying… try my two-minute rule.
Start with the smallest possible action. Not the whole task. Just the beginning. Because the truth is, you don’t need more motivation. You just need a doorway to walk through. And once you walk through it, things start to flow.
That was the day I finally stopped procrastinating because I finally learned how to start.
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