Life can be full of roadblocks, but what if there were little things we could do to make it a little easier? While nothing is guaranteed, what if those small changes only took a handful of seconds?
According to happiness expert Shawn Achor, the “20-Second Rule” might be all you need to make a big difference.
In his New York Times bestselling book, The Happiness Advantage: The Seven Principles of Positive Psychology that Fuel Success and Performance at Work, Achor explains that we often get stuck in everyday patterns. To “unstick” ourselves, we need to make it easier to build the habits we want and harder to maintain the ones we don’t.
Here’s how to do it
In the book, Achor gives the example of wanting to learn to play the guitar. But because he had spent so much of his life not playing, it was hard to break that cycle: “The guitar was sitting in the closet, a mere 20 seconds away, but I couldn’t make myself take it out and play. What had gone wrong?”
To make learning even possible, he simply had to take 20 seconds to remove the guitar from the closet and place it nearby. The result? He practiced 21 days in a row. He also brought in a bit of science: “In physics, activation energy is the initial spark needed to catalyze a reaction. The same energy, both physical and mental, is needed for people to overcome inertia and kick-start a positive habit.”
Works for negative habits
Those same 20 seconds can just as easily be used to take away the temptation of bad habits. Achor offered this example: If someone wants to watch less television, they can spend 20 seconds removing the batteries from the remote control, making the experience just a bit more difficult.
“The next few nights when I got home from work, I plopped down on the couch and pressed the ‘on’ button on the remote – usually repeatedly – forgetting that I had moved the batteries,” Achor wrote. “Then, frustrated, I thought to myself, ‘I hate that I do these experiments.’ But sure enough, the energy and effort required to retrieve the batteries – or even to walk across the room and turn the TV on manually – was enough to do the trick.”
The rule is this: “You need to decrease the activation energy you need to do positive habits and increase it to do negative habits.”
It’s that simple.
Many swear by it
On a Reddit thread, an OP shared that the 20-Second Rule “transformed” their life:
“I recently stumbled upon a simple but incredibly effective life hack that has made a profound difference in my daily routine. I wanted to share it with you all in the hopes that it might help someone else too. It’s called the 20-Second Rule.”
They continued, explaining how it works:
“I noticed that I often procrastinated on tasks that I knew were good for me but required a bit of effort. Whether it was working out, practicing a musical instrument, or reading, I’d always find excuses not to start. Then, I learned about the 20-Second Rule, a concept from author Shawn Achor. The idea is to make good habits 20 seconds easier to start and bad habits 20 seconds harder. For example, I placed my guitar right next to my couch, so all I have to do is reach over and start playing. I put my running shoes by the door, making it convenient to go for a jog.
It might seem insignificant, but it eliminates the initial friction that keeps you from starting a task. Once you begin, it’s often easier to keep going.”
The spark before motivation
The post received quite a few upvotes from people who seemed to like the idea.
One user shared, “If you can get outside of your head and stop relying on motivation, you can basically accomplish anything. People tend to rely on motivation to get started, but motivation comes once you have started.”
Another Redditor described the spark needed to get started: “If there’s something I really don’t want to do but really need to do, I promise myself all I have to do today is five minutes. You’ll be amazed that before you know it, an hour has gone by and you got over the initial hurdle of starting.”
