{"id":50,"date":"2014-04-19T13:06:13","date_gmt":"2014-04-19T20:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sombermoose.com\/?p=41"},"modified":"2025-09-08T10:10:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T17:10:46","slug":"the-15-minute-monotask-intervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/2014\/04\/19\/the-15-minute-monotask-intervention\/","title":{"rendered":"The 15-minute Monotask Intervention"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have problem\u00a0sometimes with having too much to do, and too many choices. My thoughts can become frenzied, and a chaotic inertia sets in. This past week I experimented with a self-managed intervention, and I&#8217;m pleased with how it worked for me.<\/p>\n<p>The idea is this. When I recognized the impending hurricane of thought <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-193 alignright\" src=\"http:\/\/sombermoose.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/15-minutes-199x300-1.jpg\" alt=\"Phone Timer App\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" \/>starting to swirl, I selected the first item that came to mind among the many that were swirling. In my first test of the technique, the item that came to mind was a speech I&#8217;m in the process of writing. The second step was to set a timer. Having one readily available on my phone was a benefit. I set the timer for 15-minutes, and sat down to work on the speech. I gave myself some boundaries: no preparing for the work (getting a drink of water, cleaning my desk off), no distractions (radio, music, phone calls), and strict adherence to the 15-minute limit. At the end of the 15 minutes, I would stop and regroup.<\/p>\n<p>What I discovered was that I was very comfortable during the 15-minute interval that I set for myself. I had no anxiety of having chosen the wrong thing; after all, it was only for 15 minutes. And forcing myself to monotask had the effect of stopping the swirling of thoughts. I had a set focus, and I allowed myself no choices. When the timer went off, I felt better. I also made some progress on my speech, which had been one source of my anxiety in the first place. I found that I was feeling more in control, and was then able to make a plan for the rest of the day that felt\u00a0more balanced.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know if the technique will continue to work for me, but I&#8217;ve since tried it a couple more times with similar results. I plan to keep it in my repertoire.<\/p>\n<p>Going back to the notion of &#8220;too much choice&#8221;, I recently watched a very interesting TED Talk by Barry Schwartz, author of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less\/dp\/0060005688\">The Paradox of Choice<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/VO6XEQIsCoM\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have problem\u00a0sometimes with having too much to do, and too many choices. My thoughts can become frenzied, and a chaotic inertia sets in. This past week I experimented with a self-managed intervention, and I&#8217;m pleased with how it worked for me. The idea is this. When I recognized the impending hurricane of thought starting to swirl, I selected the first item that came to mind among the many that were swirling. In my first test of the technique, the item that came to mind was a speech I&#8217;m in the process of writing. The second step was to set a timer. Having one readily available on my phone was a benefit. I set the timer for 15-minutes, and sat [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pgc_sgb_lightbox_settings":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-moose"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1471,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/1471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sombermoose.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}