Productivity instructor Sam Bennett suggests you take 15 minutes every day to work on something important to you.
In a world of overwhelm, with so much demanded by others, that may seem impossible. But it’s because you are struggling to keep up with incessant obligations from others that she wants you to carve out time for your own interests and projects. “Is it so outrageous that you take a quarter of an hour for yourself?” she asks in her book The 15-Minute Method.
Other difficulties might immediately come to mind beyond finding the time. Do you even know anymore what matters to you? Can you accomplish anything significant in such a small period of time? But don’t fret over such details. She promises the method will help you experience your current life more fully. “Little, tiny changes – the kind that you can make in 15 minutes – are enough to move the needle on your levels of joy and satisfaction,” she says.
You can fit in the 15 minutes at any point in your day – different times on different days, or a regular time daily if that’s your style. It can be an opening for something related to your career or devoted to a hobby or other pursuit. You can work consecutive days on the same issue or hop about idiosyncratically.
But she stresses “this 15-minute period is not for catching up on your e-mail or your paperwork or any other regular, day-to-day activity. This time is for stretching yourself. It’s for having some fun. It’s for reconnecting with your own, singular self – that part of you that is not anyone’s parent or boss or employee or friend.”
Examples she offers include:
- Take a walk. You can probably cover a kilometre; done most days, it would add up to more than 300 kilometres a year.
- Read a book. That could get you through a novel each month.
- Discover more about business, marketing or investing.
- Stretch. Her Pilates instructor says, “when you stop stretching, you die.”
- Prep food for that day or the future.
- Draw, sketch, paint or doodle. She says the time limit will limit self-criticism.
- Undertake genealogical research.
- Call your best friend or reconnect with former colleagues.
- Read poetry out loud just for the joy of it.
You can use the 15 minutes to explore your zone of creative genius or act on an idea you have viewed as too speculative. Both notions may seem scary – too grandiose. But she insists that everyone has a zone of creative genius – something they love doing and have always been good at that others praise them for. In fact, you may be good at a lot of things that come so naturally you don’t pay much attention. Instead of discounting those abilities or viewing them as occasional sidelines, discover what happens if you give them more attention – 15 minutes each day or, at least, some days. When she tried the approach, she powered her career ahead.
She also insists you are a non-stop fountain of ideas, but amid the swirl of your life never pursue them. Pick one and act on it. Maybe down the road you’ll shift to something else. She says you may find success embarrassingly easy. But even if nothing big ultimately happens, you will gain from the experience.
Don’t get hung up on finding the perfect version of this method. There is an alchemy – and a joy – from doing. Find 15 minutes each day for you.
Quick hits
- In summer, while you are stuck in your workplace or home office, it can feel like everybody else is lounging on the back of a boat, trekking through wilderness or sipping drinks on the beach. In the Shepa Learning Company’s weekly newsletter, Gayle Hallgren and Judy Thomson suggest you counter your fear of missing out by after lunch each day taking a 15-minute (or 30-minute) walk. It will also counter afternoon drowsiness.
- Consultant Frank Sonnenberg insists quitting is justified and recommended if you are heading down a dead-end street, in a toxic relationship, looking to cut your losses, getting stagnant, compromising your standards or hanging onto something to avoid being called a quitter.
- “Pessimists get to sound smart. Optimists get to actually change and grow,” observes author Mark Manson.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.