The 5 Second Rule - Mel Robbins - Part 1

5 Second Rule - Mel Robbins

2017 Reading Challenge - Day 79

  March 20, 2017 

Book 25 - The 5 Second Rule - Transform your Life, Work and Confidence with Everyday Courage
by Mel Robbins (2017)
 Part 1 - pages 1-240
Reading Time - 4 hours

Okay... I came across Mel's YouTube TEDx talk and it grabbed me, so I bought the e-book. The premise of the 5 Second Rule is really simple.

We're going through life and we get an impulse to do something - go and talk to someone, pick up a pen and write a book, work on a project - but we hesitate. We second guess ourselves, we don't "feel" like it. Our brain reads that hesitation as danger and is there to protect us from uncertainty and danger so we very quickly don't move forward on what was there in the impulse. As the quote goes "she who hesitates is lost". Yup... so there's the 5 Second Rule... when that impulse comes and you can hear the thoughts going up... just go 5-4-3-2-1 GO! And start moving... pick up the pen, start walking, open the email or the document. The idea is that the count-down in your head (and you do have to count down) gets your thoughts away from "protection" and into something else. Then you just start acting... and that carries with it a momentum. It makes a lot of sense to me. There is an inertia that comes with not doing something. A body at rest, after all, is at a more stable state than a body in motion. So there's some energy required to get moving... but once we're moving, it's a lot easier to keep moving.

Sooo... that's it. Did it need a whole book? Probably not. She quotes a lot of people who have used the 5 Second Rule - quotes from Facebook and Twitter and wherever. I thought those got a bit tiresome after a while, particularly as she tended to quote and paraphrase them before then giving you the actual screenshot of the comment. Meh... not necessary. Kind of a short-cut to actually providing us with some in-depth anecdotal stories.

Anyhow... does the 5 Second Rule work? Yup, I would say it does. Is it a good antidote to procrastination? I think it is. It makes a lot of sense... that we end up being manipulated by our feelings and thoughts into not doing something. Will I use this trick in the future? Yup... and we'll see how it goes. Would I buy the book again? Nope... just watch the TEDx talks and whatever other YouTube videos are out there by her.