I was bone tired. I had been somewhere in middle America jumping around a hotel ballroom for three days teaching hundreds of children how to dance. (For the record, no forty-year-old set of knees appreciate a concrete floor padded only with threadbare floral carpeting.) After eating my one and only unimaginative meal of the day, I daintily slid under the covers of my hotel bed ready to recuperate.
Then I remembered – I needed to work. As a co-founder of a fledgling small business, I spend every spare minute marketing, replying to emails, tweaking our products, and researching how to make the change I would like to make in the world.
But at that time, making that world-altering difference paled in comparison to the sexy siren of sleep.
This, my friends, is so often the fork in the road – the difference between those who go above and beyond and those who settle for mediocre. This is the test of mental strength. This, as Will Smith would say, “Is the time for the lion to do lion things.” So, I decided to be a lion and I set a timer for fifteen minutes. I told my sleep siren to go play another round of Candy Crush, I chugged some cold water, and I got to work.
As you might have guessed, after that fifteen minutes was up, I was encouraged. I was pumped. I was ready for more. Ninety percent of the time, this is the outcome of my 15 minutes of intentional productivity.
I ended up working for more than 90 minutes that evening. I ate a number of spiny, delicious frogs, and I then happily beckoned my siren back to the bed…guilt-free and victorious.
The moral?
Do what you know you should do and keep doing it for at least 15 minutes.
Two Kinds of Shoulds
The diciest word in the piece of advice above (by far) is the word “Should.” This word is as loaded as the baked potato at Applebee’s and the family political discussion around it. Should is polarizing. Should is the word equivalent of elementary school mask mandates. Should is the 2020 presidential election in the US. Should is the return of the popularity of “mom jeans.”
I happen to maintain that there are two very different and distinct types of Shoulds. And they are only discernible by the creator of the Should (you).
The first type of Should is what I like to call the “external Should.” This Should is dictated by society, not by our own personal goals and preferences. “I Should go to church this week. I haven’t been in a while.” “I Should be better about remembering my friends’ birthdays.” “I Should know who that actor is, but I don’t.”
This external Should rears its ugly head in the minds of people pleasers and indecisive empaths alike. Now, if you love going to mass, licking the stamp on the world’s last Hallmark greeting card, or playing IMDB roulette, bust a move with your bad self. But chances are, you just feel like you Should do these things because society tells you that you Should.
I refer to the second type of Should as the “internal Should.” This Should shouts advice directly from your gut and it’s pretty much always in line with your top priorities in life. “I Should stop doom scrolling Instagram.” “I Shouldn’t have that second martini.” “I Should step outside my comfort zone and call that potential client.”
The completion of an internal Should feels fantastic. You know you have faced down the demon and won. Internal Should completion feels like the Devil went down to Georgia and crowned you the best that’s ever been. Internal Shoulds, in essence, get you one step closer to your life goals. Or, as Paolo Coelho would say, your Personal Legend?
Recognizing which Should is which
Now, only you can decide which Should is which. If you need to prioritize rest, maybe you need to hit they hay more often. If you’re like me and you’re trying to build a business as quickly as possible, you might want to postpone heading to bed from time to time.
But, if you’re only staying up because you want your coworkers to see the timestamp that you were burning the midnight oil replying to emails…your efforts might be a little misguided.
Often, when people first start to attempt to discern an internal Should from an external Should, they only know after they’ve completed their task. The way you feel after you complete a task should say everything about whether it was worth your while. I remember spending a full weekend putting together a three-year projection for a branch of the company I was working for at the time. Afterward, I felt…empty. I left the company a few weeks afterward. That? Felt like a long-awaited exhale.
Here are some questions I like to ask myself before embarking upon a task:
Am I doing this for myself or for someone else? (Doing things for other people is not a bad thing. Not unless you give no toots about that other person.)
Will this task take me one step closer to one of my top five aims in life?
Will this Should make me healthier, wealthier, more informed, or more fulfilled?
Is there another task I’m putting off by insisting on doing this task?
Am I doing this to fulfill someone else’s expectations?
Am I doing this because I feel guilty?
These are simply questions to ask yourself before using a piece of your precious time on this planet to do something. Again, the validity of a Should lies only in the eye of the beholder.
Fifteen minutes to eternity
Fifteen minutes is 1/96th of your day. If you have an internal Should that you would like to complete (but are experiencing resistance to it), I guarantee you that you can stick it out for fifteen minutes. It’s not long. But, it’s long enough. That’s the point.
I have always found that when my fifteen-minute timer sounds, I have usually willfully wedged myself into a flow state and I usually want to keep going. I’m also encouraged by my fortitude to follow through with what I knew I should do to take one small step toward my goals. All of this usually results in a productive work session, a feeling of accomplishment, and a determination to repeat this cycle in the future.
So, it is simple, but not really. Nothing is simple. But you can do anything, complex or simple, for fifteen minutes. And if you find a meaningful internal Should and you can stave away the temptation monster for fifteen minutes, I believe you can conquer the world. Or, at least your to-do list.