Is it possible to change your life in just 15 minutes a day?
You bet your bippy it is.
Here’s how: Spend 15 minutes a day, every single day, on something that matters to you.
You will discover this: it is amazing how much you can accomplish in just 15 minutes of concentrated focus. And it is flat-out jaw-dropping how much you can accomplish when you are devoting those 15 minutes every day for a week, a month, a year, six years, sixty years…
I’ve been advocating the 15-Minute Method for over 20 years now, and every day I hear a new story about how someone completed their screenplay, or found an exciting new job, or cleared out the basement, or established a meditation practice – all done working in less time than it takes to complete a new level of Candy Crush.
When people tell me – as they often do – that they are “overwhelmed,” usually they are telling me that they have too many things on their to-do list, and none of them are sufficiently interesting to warrant doing first. One client referred to this as “being pecked to death by ducks.”
The 15-Minute Method asks you to pick something and focus on it. What will you pick? You may know the answer right away, or maybe you feel that there’s now a whole new flock of ducks coming at you. No worries – spend your first 15 minutes making a list of potential 15-minute activities, and then, the next day, pick one. Try it. If you like it, keep going. If not, keep working your way through the list, noticing what resonates for you and what doesn’t. Even if you spend your 15 minutes sitting quietly, staring at a blank piece of paper, I would consider that time well spent. As those of us who remember the long car trips of our youth spent in the way-back of the family Volvo well know, boredom can be profoundly instructive.
If the first benefit of the 15-Minute Method is the necessity to prioritize and focus, the second benefit is that of cumulative effort. If you play guitar for 15 minutes every day, it will not be very long before you are a much better guitar player. If you write for 15 minutes a day, eventually you will have a book. If you clear a few inches of clutter each day, you will soon have a clear, workable space. The results are undeniable and unmistakable.
Finally, the 15-Minute Method gives you permission to fool around, to fail, to noodle, to try a new way, to hopscotch right over your perfectionism, procrastination, and self-doubt and figure out what works for you. It allows you an easy way to prove to yourself that you can keep your promises to yourself, which has a delightfully positive effect on your self-esteem.
YOUR ZONE OF CREATIVE GENIUS
I often use the word creative, and I know that might turn some people off. Somehow the world has conflated the words creative and artistic. But those two things are not synonyms.
Creative refers to the talent of innovative problem-solving.
Artistic refers to a talent in the arts.
Not everyone is artistic. Everyone is creative.
We are all creating, all the time. We create dairy-free meals and vacation plans and holiday parties. We create stories about people we see on the street. We create homes and knitting patterns and lifelong friendships and family traditions and in-jokes. Our creations make up our world.
You may think that because you don’t make visual art, write, or perform, you are not creative. Or maybe you think creative people are kind of weird. (To which I say: Honey, everyone is weird. Embrace your weird.)
Everyone is creative, and more than that, everyone has a Zone of Creative Genius.1
If you are wondering what your Zone of Creative Genius is, answer these questions swiftly and without pondering:
- What’s the one thing I love doing, no matter what?
- What’s something I’ve always been naturally good at?
- What’s something that other people praise me for, but I think isn’t that big of a deal?
- What’s something that, if someone woke me up at 3 a.m. and said, “Hey, we’re going to go do XYZ right now,” I would be up in a flash and looking for my shoes?
- What’s something that I spend quite a bit of money and time on, and my family and friends think it’s a bit crazy?
If you’re still not sure, consider this: In every office I’ve ever been in, there is a “birthday person.” The birthday person is someone in the office who takes it upon themselves to keep track of everyone’s birthday and make sure there’s a card and cupcakes in the break room. And if you ask them if they mind the extra work, they’ll say, “Oh, no! I like doing this. It’s fun for me.”
That birthday person has a natural gift for celebration and an ability to make people feel special. That’s their Zone of Creative Genius. And if that person wanted to start a business, they might do well to leverage this gift for getting the party started and go into the events business. Or perhaps they’d do well in HR, creating policies and practices that help employees feel seen, heard, and valued.
You can also think of your Zone of Creative Genius this way: If you have ever solved a problem differently than anyone else has ever solved the problem, congratulations — you are a creative genius. And the way in which you solved the problem is the key to your Zone of Creative Genius.
Most people have a few Zones of Creative Genius. Highly creative people have multiple Zones of Creative Genius. They are naturally good at a lot of things. You may know someone like that — the artistic ones are pretty easy to spot, but the non-artistic highly creative people are often hiding in plain sight.
You might be especially good at communicating with animals. You might have a gift for giving compliments that make others feel seen. Your creativity might express itself in a gift for systems, or numbers, or logic, or skepticism.
Your Zones of Creative Genius might go unnoticed by you, because they come so naturally. You might want to make a running list of hobbies you’ve loved, documentaries that fascinate you, odd fixations, and compliments you get that cause you to think to yourself, “But everyone is like this, aren’t they?” (nope — they aren’t) and see if you can find some commonalities.
Also, you might want to ask some trusted friends the things they’ve noticed you are good at.
Figuring out your one or more Zones of Creative Genius can be a helpful step in determining how you want to spend your 15 minutes a day.
Copyright © 2024 by Sam Bennett. Based on the book The 15-Minute Method: The Surprisingly Simple Art of Getting It Done.
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1 Hat tip to Gay Hendricks and his groundbreaking work on Zones of Genius in both The Big Leap and The Genius Zone. Both are great reads.
