Just 5min
Stop trying to "start studying"
"Start studying" is too big to begin. It has no edges — it could mean an hour, it could mean the whole syllabus, and your brain treats it as all of that at once. So you don't start; you circle.
Replace it with something with edges: a five-minute timer, and one specific action to do while it runs.
Pick the single smallest action
Not "revise the chapter". Something you could not reasonably refuse:
- Open the document and read the last paragraph you wrote.
- Copy out the three headings from the chapter.
- Write one bad sentence answering the essay question.
- Do the first line of one practice problem.
The action is a door, not the room. Once you are through it, continuing is easy; it was only ever the doorway that was hard.
Start the timer before you feel ready
Ready is not coming, and waiting for it is the loop. Set five minutes and begin the action the moment it starts. The timer running is the signal to work — not your mood, not a clean desk, not "after this one video".
You are not deciding whether to study. You decided already, for five minutes. You are just doing the five minutes.
Plan afterwards, not first
A study plan feels like progress. It colour-codes a timetable, it lists every topic, and it quietly eats the exact window you had to actually work. The plan is not useless — it is just in the wrong order.
Do the five minutes first. Then, while you are already working and the resistance is gone, spend two minutes deciding what is next. Planning costs almost nothing once you have started; it costs you the whole session when it goes first.
When the five minutes are up
Most of the time you will keep going — you are past the doorway and the next page is not scary. If you genuinely have nothing left, stop without guilt. Five minutes of real revision beats an hour you planned and never began. Do it again in an hour.
This is the five-minute rule applied to studying. If 25-minute study blocks keep collapsing before you start them, here is why.
Start your five minutes now
Close this tab. Open the material. Set five minutes. Read one page.
Just 5min is a free iPhone timer that makes that a single tap, and keeps the countdown running even if you lock the phone and put it face down while you work.