Exercise the 24 Hour Rule

We’ve all heard about this in one form or another. It’s about taking 24 hours to evaluate how you feel about a situation before reacting or taking action on it. The most common application of this that I heard growing up was if you’re upset. Before confronting a friend, or sending that email, we were told to take 24 hours to see if we still feel so strongly. At that point, it makes sense to send it.

The concept makes total sense! Our emotions can cloud our judgment and make us act impulsively, overriding our best intentions and doing more harm than is necessary. It works for the same reason that goal setting and habit formation should be done in an unbiased state. Making decisions in an unemotional state allows you to be sure you are putting your energy where you want. It’s about being deliberate.

Well, recently I had the opposite happen, but the 24 hour rule still applies. I had a business idea and a mental plan about how to execute it. Instead of riding the momentum and staying up all night building it out, I waited a day to see if it was something I still wanted to add to my plate. As it turns out, I am still super excited about it and took the next steps writing protocols for an experiment to validate my intuition.

It’s a self-improvement tool, and if all things go well in these next steps I might be asking for your feedback and thoughts shortly! But for now, make sure you are practicing the 24 hour rule in all emotional states to make sure you are acting with your purest intentions in mind.