Key insights from: The 5 Second Rule (2024)

Key insights from

The 5 Second Rule

By Mel Robbins

It’s simple: when confronted with a situation in which you know what the right thing to do is—and then you hesitate due to fear, doubt, and anxiety—counter the hesitation by counting down from five. This brief 5-second window allows you to distract yourself from your fears, short-circuit your hesitation habit, and help you focus on the objective at hand.

When you get down to “1,” take action. Whatever that initial gut-level instinct was, go for it.

Counting down from five may sound absurd or juvenile or overly simplistic, but it works. It’s a mental re-calibration and a way to distract yourself long enough to make a decision. If you physically move, this leads to an actual shift in your thinking. A change in physiology leads to a psychological change. The 5 Second Rule (5SR) is a form of metacognition—that’s psychology speak for a strategy that enables you to beat your brain, which has a bad habit of making us indecisive. After that short window of desiring to act, the brain takes over and hampers action. What this means is that taking action regardless of what you might be feeling is key. Waiting until you feel motivated to act is just a waste of time. Life’s too short for that.

There’s something satisfying about confronting challenges. Moreover, with the payoff of confidence, growth, and a sense of self-respect, what could anyone suggest as an alternative? Comfort is safe, but it comes at a cost.

This 5SR has gone viral and helped thousands upon thousands across the globe gain a sense of control and confidence in their lives. Again, it begins with the little things. Wins in these small areas will gain critical mass and prove the tipping point for bigger decisions and more challenging tasks. These little choices give shape and meaning to our lives; they drive a deeper transformation. As you step into life’s challenges with courage, you will discover how much nonsense you have been tolerating, how much time you’ve been wasting, and you will find an excitement in excising it from your life through making five-second decisions that align with the core of who you are. This core will become clearer as you make these decisions.

The 5SR is simple and applicable in numerous contexts. It can help with productivity, monitoring and managing emotions, expanding the limits of your comfort zone, being creative and innovative, turning thinking into action, and confronting addiction or depression.

It only takes five seconds for your life to change. Really, it’s that simple—though not easy. The 5SR is effective because it taps into the process of how we change, and involves things that are actually in your control: you and your ability to make decisions. These decisions will give you access to the greatness that lies within you. It begins with a self-acceptance: valuing yourself, your potential, your hunches, and then acting on those hunches. As you participate in this process of choosing action over indecisiveness, you take steps towards the truest you.

When people try to act on their instincts, they are often plagued by doubts and self-analysis and fears that hamper clear thinking and discourage action. Take five seconds to make a decision. Courage in everyday scenarios is the difference maker. It is what allows us to act. Consider Nike’s tagline, “Just do it.” The marketing decision to add the word “just” shows that the company understood something critical about human nature: as humans, we can drown in inhibitions if we let ourselves. We need that push to jump in before we overthink things.

The “just do it” decisions are led by the heart. They are made before the more risk-averse brain can hijack the impulse and run it through the grinder of doubt and introspection. This is something that takes courage and practice, but it is very likely that life will become less scary and more enjoyable, more full of opportunities, and ultimately more fulfilling as you “just do it.”

It sounds crazy, but if you can alter your morning routine rhythms then you can do anything.

Chemists talk about “activation energy”: the minimum amount of energy required to catalyze a chemical reaction. Scientists have found that the initial reaction often requires a far greater amount of energy than is required to maintain the reactive state. So it is with decision-making: the effort required to get out of bed when the alarm goes off in the morning might seem like a lot, but conquer that and the day’s activities will likely come more easily.

Embrace the resistance so that you learn what it’s like to fight and practice doing something even when the feelings are not there and your warm, cozy bed is all but seducing you to linger just a bit longer.

Treat getting out of bed like the launch of a space shuttle. At the end of a five second countdown, jump out of bed like you’re blasting off from the launch pad. This initial act of getting up when the alarm goes off has the power to set the tone for the day. Studies have show that it positively impacts people’s perception of the day ahead and their expectations for what it will bring.

Consider doing the Wake Up Challenge: set your alarm thirty minutes earlier than the time you usually wake up and put your alarm clock in another room so that you will be forced to get up. These steps help add resistance and a sense of challenge so that when you rise to it, there will be greater satisfaction in beating it. It is easy to settle into a passive mindset and rationalize hitting snooze by telling yourself that you’re “just not feeling it” or that you’ll start tomorrow. Again, don’t wait for the day when you “feel” like getting out of bed, because that day may never come.

Unbeknownst to just about everyone, procrastination is not categorically bad. We can distinguish between destructive and productive forms of procrastination.

Productive procrastination is the time you take apart from a creative project. The distance provides people with an opportunity to see their undertakings from new vantage points. This is often where the brightest flashes of creative brilliance occur. The best off-the-wall, out-of-the-box thinking often comes when there is no pressure of impending deadlines but the mental breathing space to try new things.

The dark side of procrastination is another matter entirely. When there are fixed deadlines you know you need to hit but you avoid doing the work that must be done to hit them—that is destructive procrastination.

Contrary to popular belief, procrastination is not an indication of laziness, poor discipline, or a deficient will—rather, it is a way of coping with stress. Avoiding work is the fruit, not the root. What is more, it is not the failure to meet the deadline or do well on the test itself that is scary for procrastinators, but the failure’s impact on relationships, finances, and sense of identity.

Fortunately, procrastination is not something you have to live with. The 5SR can help you beat it. First of all, whatever you do, don’t self-flagellate over your tendency to procrastinate. Studies have shown that subjects who were able to forgive themselves for past procrastination were far less prone to procrastinate on future projects.

This makes perfect sense because procrastinators are usually hard on themselves. They reason that they can avoid failing by doing nothing. But the shame that comes from nothing getting done amplifies the stress that is leading to procrastination. It’s a vicious cycle.

To break free of this cycle, count down from five before you start a task and start it immediately when the countdown finishes. When you start in this way, you will gain a sense of control that will quickly minimize the stress that the out-of-control feelings were producing.

In a famous study conducted by Cornell professor Karl Pillemer, interviews were conducted with over 1,000 elderly individuals about the meaning of life. Dr. Pillemer was surprised to find that a strong theme that emerged was regret over how much time they had wasted worrying. Their advice to younger generations was that life is too short to spend it worrying.

If you’re not careful, your mind will drift toward the default setting of worry. When you catch yourself worrying, use the 5SR to reorient your thoughts, and remind yourself that worrying will not resolve any fears, real or imagined.

Love is another feeling that fear loves to seize and throttle. If we love something or someone, the idea of the object of our love changing or suddenly being lost is terrifying. PsychologistBrené Brown writes that the phenomenon of fear snapping at love’s heels and trying to rob life of moments that are truly magical is extremely common. Love is a tender, vulnerable thing, after all. When dark, pessimistic thoughts and fears creep in to your mind, use the 5SR to reclaim control. Remember that the negative, dark places that your mind goes are almost invariably unreal scenarios that will, in all likelihood, never materialize.

It is not enough, however, to reject the dark, unreal hypotheticals: it is important to replace them with something positive. Ask yourself what you’re thankful for right now to give yourself an opportunity to dwell on positive things. What’s amazing and powerful is that, unlike the fears that are nothing more than a figment, the positive things that come to mind are real and concrete.

Pursing passions is an amazing thing. It makes us come alive and gives a sense of purpose that we so deeply crave. But how do we clarify and develop a passion? It is a process that requires both curiosity and courage.

Jealousy is not a virtue, but it can give you insight into what you value and what you want. What do you envy in others? Explore the feeling and then—instead of stewing in jealousy like many other people sadly do—count down from five.

As your gut draws your attention to things and piques your interest, follow the instinct. As you investigate your interests, you will build momentum as one thing leads to the next. As your singular set of interests move from hobby to all-consuming passion, you will feel the tension grow: the desire to switch from pursuing your passions part-time and on the side to full-time vocation and life’s work. The tension will eventually become unbearable.

At the end of the day, the question is one of commitment, not feelings. As discussed earlier, you will never feel ready to take the plunge. Use the 5SR to give you that last nudge into the unknown.