The Power of 15 Minutes

I’ve written before about 30-Day Challenges. Some of the reasons I use 30-Day Challenges are to try something new, develop a new habit, accomplish a task, and make my time more memorable.

The Power of 15 Minutes for 30-Day Challenges

Many of my 30-day challenges need a minimum amount of time each day. I typically use 15 minutes as my minimum. If I can spend more time on a challenge, that’s great. But I make sure I’ve spent my minimum of 15 minutes each day before I go to bed for the night.

My husband and I recently moved from Colorado Springs to San Diego. Since unpacking and organizing can seem overwhelming, my 30-Day Challenge for April is to spend at least 15 minutes each day unpacking and organizing. No matter how busy I am, by following my 15-minutes-a-day minimum, I feel like I’m always moving forward in my goal of unpacking and organizing.

One of my favorite quotes by Marla Cilley of FlyLady fame is “You can do anything for 15 minutes.” FlyLady suggests setting a timer for 15 minutes to avoid procrastination and make a task seem easier. I use the 15 minutes a bit differently for my 30-day challenges because I don’t stop after the 15 minutes. I just use that time period as my minimum for the day. But I do use a timer to be sure I’ve met my minimum time limit.

Of course, some 30-day challenges don’t need 15 minutes a day. I recently completed a 30-Day Nutrition Challenge and 30-Day Exercise-a-Day Challenge from Fit Body Full Life. For the 30-Day Nutrition Challenge, I set my own goal, which was to include fruits and/or vegetables in at least 4 meals/snacks each day. I successfully accomplished that and became much more focused on eating a healthy amount of fruits and vegetables each day.

The 30-Day Exercise-a-Day Challenge just involved doing an exercise to a video, which was typically 2 minutes each day. That was easy to accomplish, and I learned some new exercises and became more focused on interval training and exercising for short amounts of time each day. I loved that I was able to complete the challenge in the middle of our move. I’ll go back and do the challenge again some month, adding more repetitions to increase the level of difficulty.

More about the Power of 15 Minutes

Leadership expert Neen James uses 15 minutes as a period of time to increase productivity. You’ll find more information in the following video: “Neen James Speaks about the Power of 15 Minutes on WFMZ-TV’s News at Sunrise”