As an entrepreneur and a mom wearing many hats, the buck stops here. With no one to keep me accountable for my time, the overwhelm of the freedom of being able to decide what to do next is sometimes unimaginable. There are a lot of time management tactics and productivity tools, and I reference many of them in my blogs, but this one is my favorite and while I doubt I invented the strategy of tackling life in ten minutes, I like to think of it as my own. 

Life in 10 minutes was actually born out of a date I had one weekend (seriously that long ago). More specifically, it was born from the mess I made trying to get ready for said date, combined with the lethargic effects of the wine I experienced the following morning. I needed to clean my room, to find my computer so I could start the article I was meant to be working on. After an hour of staring down the mess from my couch, I got so fed up with my lack of productivity—especially since cleaning my room was the thing I was doing to avoid the work I needed to be doing—that I finally put my foot down. Or rather, I picked up my roommate’s iPhone and set the timer for 10 minutes, figuring, ten minutes won’t kill me, right? 

When the timer went off not only was I still alive, I was also almost completely finished cleaning my room, I’d found my computer, and the sense of accomplishment got me to power through another 3 minutes to cross the task off my list! I applied the same tactic to the rest of my list that day (I had to set it several times to finish the article and broke it down into ten minutes per paragraph) and I’ve been using it ever since. Life in ten minutes has proven helpful starting writing projects, nailing a design, invoicing, and even working on my taxes—turns out even taxes are bearable in ten-minute increments. Try it out the next time you have a long list staring you in the face with no motivation to get it done. Let me know how goes!

​