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1-2-3: The Brain Glitch That Makes Hard Tasks Feel Harder Than They Are
sent by Joaquín Kosegarten | August 11, 2026
You know the feeling. A task sits on your list for days.
Every time you think about it, your shoulders tense and your brain recoils.
When you finally sit down to do it, it takes 40 minutes.
So why did it feel like climbing a mountain?
Your brain has a glitch. And once you see it, you can stop falling for it.
1 Idea
Shrink the task until starting it feels almost embarrassingly small.
2 Ways it saves you time
1. Your brain doesn’t distinguish between imagined effort and actual effort. When you think about a hard task, it simulates the difficulty in advance, which triggers the same stress response you would feel doing the work itself. That’s why thinking about a task can feel as exhausting as doing it. Shrinking the task bypasses this entirely. A 5-minute “version” bypasses the dread response and cuts the 30 to 60 minutes most people spend avoiding the task before starting it.
2. Once you are 5 minutes in, the Zeigarnik Effect takes over. Your brain dislikes unfinished things, so it naturally pulls you to keep going. What looked like a 2-hour beast often finishes in 45 minutes because the hardest part, the starting, is already behind you. You save the time you would have lost to procrastination, plus the time the task would have bloated to if you kept delaying it.
3 Steps to Get It Done:
1. Look at the task you have been avoiding. Identify the smallest possible first action. Not “write the report,” but “open the document and write the title.”
2. Set a 5-minute timer and commit only to that window. Tell yourself you can stop when it ends.
3. When the timer goes off, decide: keep going or stop. Most days you will keep going. On the days you stop, you are still 5 minutes further than yesterday.
Conclusion
Hard tasks are not as hard as your brain thinks they are.
Shrink the start, and the mountain turns into a hill. Try this today on the one task you have been avoiding all week.
This is what the Brain step in Get It Done is built around: outsmarting the mental patterns that quietly keep you stuck.
“But 5 minutes are not enough to make real progress!”
That’s exactly the belief keeping you stuck. You are not aiming for real progress in the first 5 minutes. You are aiming to start. Because once you start, real progress is almost automatic. The goal is not the 5 minutes. The goal is the 45 minutes that happen after them.
As promised — 1 minute that can save you hours
Yours in Getting It Done,
Joaquin Kosegarten
Author of Get It Done
Creator of the 1-2-3 Get It Done Newsletter
P.S. Fun Fact: Neuroscientists at Tel Aviv University discovered that the brain regions activated when we anticipate a difficult task overlap significantly with the regions activated when we experience physical pain. Functional MRI scans showed that the mere thought of tackling something unpleasant triggers the insular cortex, the same part of the brain that processes discomfort. In other words, procrastination isn’t laziness. It’s your brain trying to avoid what it literally perceives as pain. The 5-minute trick works because it’s small enough to slip past that alarm system entirely.
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The Brain Glitch That Makes Hard Tasks Feel Harder Than They Are
About the Newsletter
1-2-3 Get It Done is a weekly 1-minute read trusted by busy professionals who want to achieve more in less time without burning out.
Each issue gives you 1 idea, 2 ways it saves you time, and 3 steps to put it into action immediately.