How To Accomplish A Lot In 15 Minutes

How To Accomplish A Lot In 15 Minutes

- My chaotic life guide to getting more shit done when your life is always in turmoil and everything builds up and overwhelms you and gets out of hand. Ha.

The long and the short of it?

Step 1 – Block out 15 whole entire minutes on your schedule for one of your tasks. Or better yet, don’t even schedule it in. Just wing it in the spur of the moment when the spirits tell you, grab your phone, hit the 15-minute timer, and get to work.

Step 2 – Before you hit start… turn off all distractions. Every single one. It’s 15 fucking minutes. If I can do it, which is why I settled on 15 minutes, you can do it. The only distraction I will allow you is music, because that can get you moving faster, BUT, it can’t be music with ads or skips, or anything that will pull you out of your 15 minutes of work flow.

Step 3 – Ok, now start.

And voila. When that timer goes off, you will have just completed 15 minutes of a task you have either been putting off forever or absolutely dreading getting done and never wanted to start. You’re welcome. Do that a few more times, and the task will be done forever, crossed off that list, and the accomplishment will feel so good.

I know someone just rolled their eyes at my little list and went, that’s the whole post? That’s so stupid.

AND YET SO SIMPLE.

I talk about this same theory when I talk about intimacy without romance.

Because for many of us for some of us, for me, it’s not always “just that simple and easy.”

For me, my life is chaotic. At best. On the good days. And absolute wild madness on the not so good days. On the not so good days, things build up fast, and after a few not so good days, it can be mind-numbingly insane how fast I fall behind.

My lists are forever growing, and sometimes over long periods where nothing gets tackled or crossed off, it can seem like it will consume me.

The never-ending shit show circus that is my life keeps piling the insanity on and often I can’t catch my breath, never mind tackle the to dos from last week that need to be finished, or figure out what ones I am already behind on now.

Sometimes the brain cannot focus. I don’t know about you guys, but there are so many days lately where I feel like I have one braincell left to function on, and it’s freezer burnt in the deep freeze because it fell in after looking for a fudgsicle at 3am last week. Also, even more often, the time is not there. When we have those big tasks on our list and we seem them as a whole – just how many days IS it going to take to tackle the storage room or refile 6 years of paperwork – they seem bigger than they are.

But just like our dreams and goals, we have to chunk them down into more manageable, and realistic, amounts.

And let me tell you something – sometimes those 15 minutes can go a long way to getting a handle on things and feeling like you’re making progress. In my experience (which, if you’re following along, is a hefty load of experience), 15 minutes can sometimes be the biggest amount of time we can give certain things at any given time anyway, so it doesn’t feel pressuring or impossible.

Now hey, before I go further, miss me with any attitude, because I KNOW some tasks need more time or attention than 15 minutes, this isn’t about your job or work, and I am aware that some of you can’t even wrap your head around having to set a timer to force yourself to get shit done for 15 minutes and that’s cool and good for you have a seat somewhere else this is the club for us struggling stressed out ADHD half a brain cell moms parents boss babes trauma livers survivors who are out here doing our best. Man, I hope I am the only one that all those words applied to, ha.

For me, some days, everything is a struggle.

So, I take control in 15 minute bursts.

And you may actually be surprised how much you can really get done if you shut down and focus on a single tasks for even a simple 15 minutes.

Hell, I wrote this blog in a series of 15 minute bursts.

You may also be surprised how many things don’t take as much time as you realize, especially when you’re focused, or, how GOOD it feels to finally get something done that’s been hovering in the back of your brain and is hindering your entire life, and the whole task took 7 minutes. Sometimes you get time to spare, and you’re done before the timer goes off. The first time that happened I was almost embarrassed, ha.

It can be a little humbling too, but hey we won’t go there. That’s on me.

Sometimes the hardest part is just committing. It’s starting. It’s doing the thing. We all know this year was my big eye opener on my struggle bus issues with commitment. But even I can stay on the bus for 15 minutes.

Yall, 15 minutes ain’t even a real commitment. You can do 15 minutes. That’s less than it takes to ghost someone.

As I started chunking certain things in my life into these 15 minutes, I made lists of areas of my life and the huge things with them and broke them into: household and life stuff, self care, business, future planning, hell, even the filing cabinet and the storage room, yard work, etc.

And guess what?

My storage room got done in less than a week, the storage room that’s been a pain for years.

I had to tackle an abundance of the yard work myself this year, with my son all banged up, and although it seemed like massive, daunting task, over the course of a week and a handful of 15 minute bursts, my yard be looking fine as hell right now.

Getting these things done feels good. It frees up space in my life and brain.

Work is accomplished better.

And,  yeah, sometimes the timer goes off and I don’t stop, because now I am making progress on old nagging tasks that need finishing. And that feels so good too, that sense of being so filled with the desire to continue, to finish.

And when I finish…

I get a sweet treat.

After this, it’s McDonald's.

I don’t care how you reward yourself, and it’s ok if sometimes the reward is just getting it done and that sense of finality, or if you have to beg and bribe yourself every single time, if that works for you, it works.

Just get to work.

You got 15 minutes.

And hey, if you're looking for a way to track all those 15 minute things, check out my journal for 2026.

Author Carissa McIntyre,

Lady Mack Xo

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