One-Minute Timers

Hey, I’m Taylor Vogel and this is Now That I’m Not Your Teacher. [cue music] Each week we’ll explore an aspect of adulting that you might have missed in school. Since I used to be a teacher, I’ll structure it in ways that are proven to help you retain information. But since I’m not your teacher anymore, I can approach it in a way that’s honest and sometimes inappropriate for a classroom.
In this week’s unit, we’re talking timers and how using them can make a HUGE difference in the success you feel. We’ll work this week in time increments, wrapping up this week with a tiny timer of one minute.
There are some times I just want to do one more thing before I start a task I don’t want to do (by the way this is almost always either laundry or any act of moving away from the recliner once I’m settled in). But for the guilty pleasures in life—procrastination, anger, or munching on an unhealthy snack—setting a timer can be a great way to indulge, process, and then quickly change course.
We are not perfect by society’s standards, and we sure as hell shouldn’t be. Sometimes I’m irrationally angry and I just need to feel that anger alone. When a therapist told me to spend one minute a day being angry about something, I suddenly had permission to do this thing I had been told my entire life not to do. So, I would set a timer for one minute and scream into a pillow about the thing I was angry about. When the timer went off, I was able to pop back into my rational self, but had allowed the process to complete. I don’t like to spend more than a minute alone in a big feeling, or even procrastinating, because any more than one minute quickly becomes ten, and ten can become a place where you live when we’re talking processing feelings. But saying “one more minute” when screen time tells me to quit playing a game satisfies my rebellious streak and rational self all at once.
One minute is also the perfect amount of time to do a quick reflect on where something you’re in progress with stands. For example, I will quickly assess what emails I didn’t get to send and spend one minute writing them down at the end of the day. I will spend one minute while cooking dinner to move the next day’s meat from freezer to fridge. Or, I’ll spend one minute at the end of a walk intentionally noticing how my body feels to determine if I need elliptical or yoga or strength training the next day. One minute is a quick process or a decision making amount of time, if you use it wisely and see it by itself.
Set a timer for one minute today and feel how long and how short it really is, and then determine how you can best use a single minute daily to be more of who you want to be. How are you making a minute work for you? Let me know on Instagram @nowthatimnotyourteacher, and be sure to subscribe to the podcast in your favorite app to get our February episodes all about being the Head of Your Household.