In my last post, I promised to share my Five Minute Rule for changing any behavior. Here it is. Live. In real time.

I’m taking five minutes right now to work on this post. Maybe I’ll finish it, and maybe I won’t. But that’s not the point.

My goal for this exercise is to start developing a new habit: writing regularly. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to blog more often, maybe once a week. So if I want to become a more prolific blogger, I have to build the habit of writing.

OK, I’ll admit this was one of my resolutions last year, too. Not unlike most people, I seem to recycle my resolutions.

[There went five minutes. I will pick this up again tomorrow.]

I actually managed to post once or twice a week for a while until other obligations got in the way. Then I fell out of the habit and found it harder and harder to start up again

So I’ve decided to commit to just five minutes a day. I don’t need to find an hour’s worth of time for writing. I don’t need to feel inspired. I just have to sit down and write. For five minutes.

You can apply the Five Minute Rule to any type of activity you’d like to initiate. Exercise? Take a five-minute walk. It won’t get you in shape, but it will be a start. Later you can extend the time. Organization? Take five minutes a day to clean a drawer or sort through stacks of papers.

We tend to get overly ambitious with our plans to change and then have trouble either starting or sticking with them. But convincing yourself to do something for  five minutes isn’t too hard.

So take five and get going.