Five-Minute Rule

Five-Minute Rule is the sort of rule a grandfather gives you on a veranda — short, plain, and annoyingly correct.

Notice what the rule really does: it converts a daily negotiation into a settled fact. Settled facts are restful. A mind with enough settled facts can spend itself on things that matter.

The idea is simple, and like most simple ideas it is easy to nod at and hard to use. The nod is free. The use costs attention, every day, in small change.

Watch the Mumbai local at 8:47 a.m. Nobody in that compartment is lazy. Yet by evening, half the day's resolve has leaked out through small negotiations: one more chai, one more scroll, one more tomorrow.

Time is the one currency the Reserve Bank does not print more of. One page cannot change a life. But one recognised pattern can change a Tuesday, and lives are made of Tuesdays.