It’s 10:23pm, Wednesday as I’m writing this blog post – my first ever blog post in my own .com. Woot!
This blog is a place for me to share my ideas, stuff I’m reading related to productivity, entrepreneurship, marketing and everything in between. I’ll be talking about what I’m learning as I navigate this world of online entrepreneurship.
I hope you’ll find my blog helpful. I know I needed a lot of guidance when I first wanted to start an online business and now it’s been a year since we launched My English Matters (if you’re not on our subscriber list yet, go get yourself there right now. Like, now).
Okay, for today’s post, I’m going to share with you something I learnt from Mel Robbins. I literally just learnt this less than 2 hours ago. It’s called the 5 Second Rule. This amazing 5 Second Rule is the reason I just bought myself this domain name and web hosting less than an hour ago (sounds dangerous, huh?). But I’ve been procrastinating from buying my own website and hosting for months now and I am not proud of it.
Maybe it’s because I’ve been telling myself I should be doing videos to teach other women about online business and marketing before I even buy the domain and hosting. I’ve been putting off doing videos because I want to wait to be perfect, wait to be a great speaker, wait for the right time in the day, wait for my 1-year-old to be a little older and be less clingy. I’ve been giving myself excuses.
As I realise it’s already September 2017, I’m thinking. Dang, I’ve only got less than 4 months before the year ends and I don’t feel like I’ve achieved anything. Which isn’t true really, we’ve achieved quite a lot with My English Matters, but I wanted to do more. I’ve been doing hours and hours of research (watching a lot of YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, reading articles, you name it) on how to create videos. But I guess it’s just the fear of being judged or feeling not good enough that’s pulling me back. Sometimes I just feel like I’m not even sure what I want to teach.
So as I was washing the dishes this morning, I thought,
Girl, just start blogging. You’re good at writing. Just write. Get a domain name, get your website up. At least start somewhere. You don’t have to do videos yet if you don’t want to. No one’s going to punish you if you don’t. You’ll do it soon enough. But just start somewhere.
I’ve always been a big believer that feeling uncomfortable and getting out of your comfort zone is a sign of growth. I also believe that most people don’t do big leaps out of the comfort zone. We do baby steps. It’s how we make slow but sustainable progress. Baby steps out of our comfort zones.
Anyway, back to what I wanted to teach. Mel Robbins. The 5-Second Rule. This is how it works.
Whenever you’re feeling lazy, tired or you just don’t have the motivation to do something that’s important to you, count backwards from 5.
5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
After 1, you immediately tell yourself to do that thing that you’ve been procrastinating. That’s what I did just before I bought my domain and website hosting. I told my husband about this rule (he’s been working at home for the past few weeks due to a wrist fracture). He needed to get some presentation slides done but found it challenging to get started. I told him to count backwards from 5 and immediately tell himself to start work. And it worked! Amazing.
Well, according to Robbins, when we count backwards, it triggers a part of our brain, the pre-frontal cortex, that is responsible for action to actually take action. When we’re feeling lazy, demotivated or just want to scroll through our Facebook feed all day, we’re activating the part of our brain that manages our habits. So this simple step of counting backwards pulls us out of our normal habits and motivates us to take action.
Kind of cool, right? Try this trick yourself and see if it works for you. It did for me.
Now I need to use this trick to push myself to do video. What do you think? Leave me a comment below. I’d love to know what you think about my first blog post and share with me what you’d like me to teach or talk about.
Update on 16 September! I used the 5 Second Rule and got myself to shoot my first video. Here it is!
The video could’ve been longer, but my kids decided they wanted the attention so this is the best I could do. Oh well. At least it’s something!