Super Awesome Runner
Hi, I'm Sam! Running has taught me a lot of things -- how motivation is not a permanent state, how difficult it is to get yourself out of bed and move, and how our brains do their best to keep us comfortable and limited in our action (they have good intentions but often miss the mark).
Each week we'll dive into a lesson learned from running, and sometimes cover a song I'm currently listening to help me get out there and move. Some weeks will have a guest runner on the show talking about their path and what helps them when things are tough.
I (Sam) hold a degree in Neurobiology and have been obsessed with motivation, goals and psychology for nearly a decade now. I am a former spin instructor, a current runner & marathoner, an entrepreneur, and podcaster. It's great to meet you!
Super Awesome Runner
How to use the two different two-minute rules to change your life and build new habits
This episode explores the transformative power of the two-minute rule for managing everyday tasks and building effective habits. By tackling small tasks immediately and gradually incorporating new habits, listeners can experience mental clarity and enhanced satisfaction in their daily lives.
• Overview of the two-minute rule and its benefits
• The mental weight of uncompleted tasks
• Strategies for using the two-minute rule effectively
• Insights from James Clear's "Atomic Habits"
• The importance of building habits in small increments
• Exploring the role of dopamine in motivation and task completion
• Encouragement to take action and prioritize small tasks
You can find the song of the week on the weekly playlist here on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2wxmDClsiebNBJ2B3Jut5u?si=5edd46976ddc4630
Hello and welcome to Super Awesome Runner. My name is Sam. I'm the host of the show on the Super Awesome Mix podcast network. You can find more of this show's content and connect directly with me at Super Awesome Runner on Instagram and on threads. I had a goal this month of reaching 125 followers and I'm happy to report at the time of this recording, I'm at 114, maybe a couple more, which is great. I'm really proud of myself. It's been a lot of fun on there and connecting with people and just joining the runner conversation on threads, which is it is thriving. Let me tell you, there are a lot of runners and, as you've probably figured out, we all love talking about running and here we are with me talking about it and, hopefully, you listening and enjoying Today.
Speaker 1:I am going to take a little bit of time to talk about the two-minute rule. There's actually a couple of two-minute rules that come to mind and they are both incredibly helpful little bits of information to use throughout your day and your life. So one of the two minute rules is known, as you know, this idea that if you can do something in under two minutes, you should do that thing, because if you don't, what you end up doing is leaving a task open in your mind, and our brains really don't like open tasks because they will hold on to it, whether consciously or subconsciously, and it ends up being truly an open thread. You know, talk about threads here. This is something that ends up opening in your mind and being held there for however long. It is that you need to do this thing. It's very similar to an experience you might have just in your everyday life.
Speaker 1:Let's say that there is a box you need to collapse and take out your recycling and you keep looking at it and you walk by it, maybe 20 times a day, you know, or maybe 100 times. Wherever this box is like, it's in your home somewhere and you see it and every single time you walk by it, you're like I really need to collapse this box and take it outside. What ends up happening is that that becomes truly a mental weight on your brain. Your brain has logged away that this is something you need to do. Every single time you see the box, you process it. You know your visual cortex, like your eyes see, it, reports to your visual cortex. Your visual cortex connects into your memory system and your memory is like oh, I have identified this box. This is the box that I need to break down and take out to recycling.
Speaker 1:Then that pings your conscious thought of like hey, you should really do that thing. You still haven't done it. And the fact that you haven't done it can actually create a sense of you know, a little miniature nano sense of despair, because the longer that you don't do it, the more you feel like you're kind of just failing at not doing this thing. You can imagine that throughout your entire day there might be a lot of versions of cardboard boxes that you need to break down. It might be a cardboard box, it might be that you haven't made the bed yet, it might be that you need to wash the dishes, it might be that you have to pay your taxes, it might be that you've got to do laundry, and so on. There can be a lot of these tasks that open up.
Speaker 1:So the two minute rule the first one really is this idea of shutting down open tasks because they really can weigh on you both emotionally and mentally over time. So if it's going to take you and I bet it would less than two minutes to break the box down, take it out to recycling, you should just do it then and there, because then it's completely wiped from your memory and your brain is no longer storing that. It's also no longer a visual piece of information that your brain and your visual cortex needs to process, because it's just gone right. You've done the thing and you've moved on, and I'm willing to bet that you have no memories of all the number of boxes in your life that you've ever collapsed and taken out for recycling, because, honestly, unless something notable happened on that trip, your brain has no reason to save that information. It's just garbage information, quite literally in this case. And so the two minute rule in that regard is to just help you lighten your mental load, because our life is filled with two minute tasks. Identify something you need to do and you can just do it right then, and there you are saving a ton of mental strain in the near future for you, or possibly long term future, depending on how long you don't do this thing. So that's the first two minute rule.
Speaker 1:The second two minute rule comes from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, excellent book if you've not read it. He also has a great newsletter that my friend and I really like because he always shares quotes in there and they can be kind of devastating truths. We always laugh about that. We will highlight a quote from the newsletter and just be like, oh my gosh, we got totally crushed today, in a good way, of course. It's a good way to be crushed Absolutely. So the second two minute rule is this idea of habit formation, because ultimately that's what that book is about. It's difficult to start a new habit. We've talked about habit formation on this podcast. It really is difficult to start something new, especially when that new thing that you want to start is going to take you a long time.
Speaker 1:So, for example, in running, let's say you want to start a warm-up routine before you go for a run. This is actually me speaking from experience. I used to never warm up. I would just like put on my clothes, head out the door and run. And no surprises, over a period of time I started to get injured because of that. It's hard to go from being effectively cold in your body to, all of a sudden, everything firing and supporting you, and running is a very physically demanding sport on your body. So be kind and you know, warm up it's going to, it's going to really, really help you.
Speaker 1:But I, you know, had heard about like five minute warm up, 10 minute warm ups, and my brain just could not wrap itself around taking five to 10 minutes before a run, you know, to warm up why? Because I was excited to go running, and getting dressed on its own can sometimes take a little bit of time. Getting your keys, your phone, just basically getting prepared at all can take already five to 10 minutes. And when you're in the morning especially, you know you've got things to do. You need to get ready for work right afterwards. You can't fathom taking another five to 10 minutes to warm up your body. You're just kind of like my body's going to be forced into a warm up. Who cares? So his two minute rule suggests that don't start a new warm up routine taking five to 10 minutes. You might actually even not do two minutes. You might do a 20 second warm up. So it might be that you've gotten 100% ready. You've got keys on hand, you know your phone in your pocket If you're listening to music, you've got it queued up and your headphones are on.
Speaker 1:Before you do anything, you're like I'm going to set a 20 second timer, I'm going to warm up for 20 seconds and you swing your legs and you raise your calves and you just loosen up for 20 seconds. Your alarm goes off. You're like great warm up done and you head out the door. 20 seconds of warm-up is not really going to warm up your body. That's not the point, though. For these early things.
Speaker 1:The point is that you are building the habit of pausing right before you start running and taking a little bit of time to engage your muscles and start to warm them up. The 20 seconds is just low enough that you can add on 20 seconds of random movements and, by the way, you should really look up dynamic stretching before a run and pick out a couple that you think you could do in like 20 or 30 seconds. Don't just, you know, wiggle your body randomly. I don't think that's going to do much, but the point is like you can convince yourself to spend 20 or 30 seconds much easier than you can convince yourself to spend 10 minutes Over time. What you're doing there is you are training your new habit that, when you go for a run, you pause right before you start running and you spend some time warming up. The trick comes that, over a period of time, of doing that it is much easier to take that 30 seconds to a minute and then maybe that minute to two minutes and then eventually you get a warm-up routine that is five to 10 minutes long and is very appropriate for any distance run. Maybe even shorten it for shorter distances and you increase it for your long runs, like I did.
Speaker 1:But now I'm happy to report I literally have a very involved 10 minutes, sometimes even 15 minute warmup routine, and I never would have imagined having that, you know, a year or two years ago, because truly the thought of even warming up for a minute was beyond me. But now I enjoy it, I look forward to it, I am so programmed to do it that if I don't do it I feel like I've missed something, like it's become so ingrained in my get ready and go habit formation that it'd be very similar to that feeling of like oh no, I've left the house and I haven't brushed my teeth Like that. For me personally, that's an awful feeling. All of a sudden my mouth tastes so bad and all I need to do is get to a toothbrush. Or if I can't, I'm going to go buy some mints or something or grab some gum, because I don't know if you have that experience, but it's just a terrible feeling.
Speaker 1:So that ended up happening for me with this. Really, you know this moment of thinking oh my goodness, I'm out here running and I haven't warmed up yet. It just became very automatic. So that is his two minute rule. So, again, to review the two two minute rules are if something's going to take less than two minutes, you should just go ahead and do it, because you're going to reduce your mental load and mental fatigue over time. The second two minute rule is that you should focus on introducing a new habit, two minutes at a time. And again, it doesn't have to exactly be two minutes. You could literally shrink it down to 20 seconds, 30 seconds, but the point is that you are training yourself to take a little bit of time to do something, that you are training yourself to take a little bit of time to do something and then over time you can expand that clock. So you take it from two minutes to four to 10 to an hour, because you know, whatever the case may be, because you can even imagine doing this with convince yourself to start a running habit or start a weightlifting habit.
Speaker 1:Strength training is so important and will help you a lot if you aren't already doing that whenever you run. And you know, convincing yourself to go and spend an hour in a gym once a week, that's a lot. But convincing yourself to buy some weights and leave them around your home and lift them for two minutes every other day or every three days, whatever the case may be, you can convince yourself to get there and eventually it'll reach the point where you're like okay, I've already got the weights in hand. Let me expand the routine. Expand the routine and, before you know it, you've built strength training into your running routine. I bring these two up together not only because they're both named the two minute rule, but because I think that you can use these two in combination to change your life. Basically, two minutes at a time. If you start to become the person that sees things and immediately acts on them, I guarantee you you will feel like a million dollars. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1:There are streaks in my life where I follow that rule religiously and if I see something and I can just do it right, then and there and I do take care of it I end the day feeling so satisfied. I also feel much lighter and less fatigued, ironically right Because I'm actually doing more work throughout the day, but the fatigue doesn't set in because I'm not seeing the amount of work that I need to do building up around me. Instead, I'm just seeing nothing right and like nothing is a beautiful thing. If I walk into a room and there's no open tasks for me, I can just enjoy that room and enjoy my time in that room and that is a beautiful thing. So those weeks where I'm really following that two minute rule of just like, do the task, knock it out, do the task, knock it out, I end the day feeling much more relaxed and happy because I'm not fatiguing myself on. Oh gosh, that's another thing I have to do. Oh, that's another thing I have to do.
Speaker 1:Habit building of, you know, two minutes at a time, because I think oftentimes they're very similar you might just end up realizing you need to dedicate a morning out of every single week where you break down boxes and take them to recycling. You know, like Tuesday becomes recycling day or Wednesday becomes your weightlifting day for your strength training program, and you've done that two minutes at a time and these two things can really again build on each other and start to dramatically change your life. What's happening a little bit, you know, just a little dive underneath the hood is basically dopamine firing and making you feel good about this stuff and, if you've probably heard all over the internet, it is a motivational neurotransmitter. It fires when it's trying to get you to do something or it is happy that you've just done something, but basically it is to try to get you to pull the lever. Basically, I always bring up the slot machine lever as a great example of dopamine inaction, because you get the random intermittent rewards. You know you pull the lever, nothing happens. Pull the lever, nothing happens. Why are you doing that? You're pulling it because you eventually assume that something exciting will happen. You are highly motivated to keep pulling that lever because you've seen or heard or have firsthand experience that sometimes when you pull the lever, you get a reward and like money spits out of the machine.
Speaker 1:So our lives are basically just us running around pulling levers. You know we reload Instagram because we were expecting to be entertained. We might also be expecting a comment or a like. Those are all things that are being driven by dopamine telling us like hey, search for that reward, search for that reward. A reward is, you know, on the pathway. If you keep doing these actions so by structuring your life to where you are reprogramming, where you get your dopamine, you can actually then get dopamine hits. By putting away recycling, by doing a strength training program, by organizing your laundry every single night so that it doesn't turn into a massive pile that you will never tackle, all of those things end up kind of being a rewarding behavior, and it's driven by dopamine. So you know, that's kind of the basis of making your bed in the morning.
Speaker 1:The idea is that, like you are training your brain first thing in the morning of seeing an open task, completing that task, getting that little bit of dopamine hit because you've done a thing that you normally put off doing, and then the idea is that you're supposed to just snowball from there, like what else can I do today and what else can I accomplish? So these two things in concert can be very powerful. They're not easy to do, though, because even two minutes of something can sometimes feel like two minutes too much. So tweak it, you know, bring it down to 20 seconds if you have to, bring it down to two seconds if you have to. The whole idea is that you start a habit and over time, over a long period of time, that habit will be life changing. It's not going to change your life. The day of the first time you break down a box and take it out to recycling, you might feel a little bit proud of yourself, but your life is probably going to be exactly the same. If you start to do that every single day, every single week of your life, for the rest of your life, you'll probably feel pretty good about yourself Because now you realize, you know you'll look back at that time when you used to have tons of boxes you never take, you know have taken out. And now they don't pile up anymore and you feel really good about that. And now they don't pile up anymore and you feel really good about that.
Speaker 1:That is this week's episode I hope you enjoy. If this is useful or interesting or not, like hit me up at superawesomerunner, on Instagram and on threads, as I've mentioned at the top of the episode. I hope you continue to have a super awesome week ahead. I hope you stay safe and your family and friends are safe. With everything going on in the world it is. I've read a number of threads where it's like the seven-day trial of 2025 is awful. How do I not renew? And I understand there's been a lot going on, but we will continue to work on ourselves and in that way we can help others and be there for them, because showing up for yourself first is one of the best ways to then show up for others. So I hope you take care and I will see you next Tuesday.
