The Most Meaningful Things You Can Do If You Have 2, 5, 15, 30 or 60 Minutes

A plan for those spontaneous pockets of time

Mike Sturm
Forge
Published in
5 min readFeb 17, 2020

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Photo: ConvertKit/Unsplash

We tend to think about “productive time” in long, uninterrupted stretches, which is why we never seem to have much of it. But the key to good time management isn’t finding more time to work on the things that matter — rather, it’s about effectively using the chunks of time that already exist in your days.

The trick is to make yourself see time differently. For instance, the five minutes it takes to stand in line at the grocery store might not seem like a lot of time to you, so you might as well scroll through social media (or if you’re like me, go down a Wikipedia wormhole). But try this: Set a timer for five minutes and just stare at it, watching the seconds tick away. You’ll quickly see that it’s a substantial amount of time that you can fill with meaningful action.

The important thing is to make a plan for these chunks of time, so whenever you’re presented with them, you can get moving. Here are some great things you can do with two, five, 15, 30, or 60 minutes.

If you have two minutes, you can …

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Mike Sturm
Mike Sturm

Written by Mike Sturm

Creator: https://TheTodaySystem.com — A simpler personal productivity system. Writing about productivity, self-improvement, business, and life.

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