The 5 Second Rule
It’s 6:00 AM. Your alarm goes off. Half-asleep, you reach over to your phone and shut it off.
…
The first thing that you remember from that morning is turning over to your phone, partially buried underneath your pillow, displaying a bright and startling “7:30.” You’re late for work.
Waking up in the morning is one thing, but getting up is an entirely different task. I remember that in my sophomore year of high school, I was in my prime (I peaked in all aspects of life at the age of 15) in terms of getting up early in the morning. For no logical reason, my alarm was always set to an extremely early 4:54 AM, and I rarely ever failed to get up at that time. Since the school bus came by at around 6:50 or so, that left me with just under 2 hours to get ready for school. When my alarm went off, I immediately shut it off, turned on my lamp, and hopped out of bed. After brushing my teeth and turning off the lights in my room, I stared outside into the pitch-black neighborhood, dimly-illuminated by streetlamps. I always headed downstairs straight to my desk to get some work done before I even ate breakfast. After an hour of studying/doing homework (which usually involved struggling with precalculus), I ate breakfast at around 6:00 AM. After eating, I had, at minimum, a comfortable half hour to finish any homework or clarify anything on the upcoming assessment that day. Strangely enough, I never found myself tired during the school day.
My junior year of high school was a completely different story, though. I tried setting my alarm very early at the start of the year, but found that I was unable to get out of bed. Every time that I set my alarm a little bit too early, I would wake up, grab my phone while still practically asleep, bring it under the covers, and put it to sleep (which requires a much less precise button input rather than a touchscreen input). I would then wake up with much less time to get ready for school, even missing the bus on a few occasions. Senior year was essentially the same thing, although the pandemic made things very easy when school went online. That period of remote learning was also when I learned about the 5 second rule.
The 5 second rule is quite simple, really. Aside from working for when you need to get out of bed, it also works for any scenario in which you have to make a decision between something that would be good for you that you don’t want to do and something that wouldn’t be as good for you that you would rather do (getting out of bed early opposed to getting out of bed late, for example). This is how it works:
When you have to make a decision, make the “correct” one within 5 seconds. That’s it. Motivation is optional :).
The logic behind making the “correct” decision within 5 seconds is because if you wait too long (ie. 5 seconds), then your brain will be flooded with all the reasons that justify not making the decision that will be better for you: “I should just sleep for another hour, I need it anyways.” “If I just close my eyes for another ten minutes, it couldn’t hurt.” “I have another week for that deadline; I’ll just get the project done tomorrow morning!” Though it is called the 5 second rule, I personally think it’s more of a 2 or 3 second rule. By 5 seconds, I’m honestly already falling asleep again.
The way Mel Robbins describes the 5 second rule in a one-liner is very powerful:
“If you have an impulse to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill the idea.”
Mel Robbins also emphasizes the importance of physically moving when you have an idea. If you have the idea of say, applying for an internship (in which case, you should apply to many internships, by the way), you should do it right away, and physically getting up will only help facilitate your actions. If you continue sitting there, your brain will begin conjuring up the excuses for you to not apply for that Google internship, not start that big project, or not make that doctor’s appointment. You’ll be surprised how quickly your brain can kill ideas. It’s really good at that. Physically moving will help you break old, bad habits, and make new, good habits. Theorize all you want about how strong your mental fortitude is, but there are some things that just won’t happen without change on the physical level.
The 5 second rule is also deeply intertwined with the concept of “discipline, not motivation.” Mel Robbins affirms this when she states that sitting around while waiting for inspiration to strike is not a good idea. Motivation isn’t going to just roll along by chance. There’s some degree of universal understanding to this “discipline, not motivation” idea. I’ve personally ran into it several times, hearing it in YouTube videos, books, and in a discussion on a podcast that very succinctly stated that you can’t wait for motivation to strike, you just need to do something.
I’m keeping this short for a reason. You just had a great idea, didn’t you? You know that doing that would be good for you. Now stop reading this and do it. I didn’t tell you to. You did.
