Swiss Cheese Method
Also known as: swiss cheesing, poking holes in a task, instant tasks
The Swiss cheese method means attacking a large, vague, unpleasant task with very small jobs of about five minutes each, taken in any order rather than from the beginning. Each one punches a hole in the task. It works on procrastination because it never asks you to commit to the whole thing, and because the holes make the task's real shape visible, which is usually smaller and more ordinary than the version in your head.
| Origin | Coined by Alan Lakein in How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life (1973), where he called the small jobs 'instant tasks' |
|---|---|
| Time required | Five minutes per hole; no planning overhead |
| Best for | overwhelming projects, vague tasks, tasks you have avoided for weeks, admin backlogs |
| Difficulty | Easy |
How to use swiss cheese method
- Name the task you have been avoiding, then stop trying to plan it.
- Write down any five things you could do on it in five minutes each: find the file, write the title, list three questions, email one person, open the form.
- Do one. Any one. Deliberately ignore the logical order, because the logical first step is often the hardest and that is why the task is still here.
- Repeat whenever you have five spare minutes. Poke holes between other work rather than booking a session.
- Expect momentum. Many holes turn into twenty minutes of work, and that is a bonus rather than the requirement.
- Stop when the remaining work is obvious and schedulable. At that point the task has become ordinary and can be finished normally.
There are no controlled trials of the Swiss cheese method itself, so treat it as a sensible heuristic rather than a tested intervention. Its logic lines up with the strongest findings about why people delay. Steel's meta-analysis of over 200 studies identified task aversiveness and low expectancy of success among the leading predictors of procrastination, and both are reduced by a five-minute job you are confident you can finish. Sirois and Pychyl's account of procrastination as short-term mood repair explains why the method works on the bit that actually blocks you: the dread attaches to the whole task, not to finding one file. Naming the specific small action also converts a vague intention into the concrete if-then form that Gollwitzer and Sheeran found reliably improves follow-through. What is not established is whether random order beats sequential order, which is the method's one distinctive claim.
Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1), 65–94. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65
Sirois, F., & Pychyl, T. (2013). Procrastination and the priority of short-term mood regulation: Consequences for future self. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 7(2), 115–127. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12011
Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
Common mistakes
- Choosing holes that are really the whole task. 'Write the introduction' is not a five-minute job; 'write the first sentence badly' is.
- Planning the holes instead of doing them. Listing twelve instant tasks is its own form of procrastination.
- Using it on work that needs an unbroken block. Deep, continuous thinking wants a long session, so poke holes to start and then schedule properly.
- Insisting on the right order. The order is the point: you are allowed to do the easy middle bit first.
Related techniques
Two Minute RuleFive Second RuleBrain DumpTimeboxing
Frequently asked questions
What is the Swiss cheese method?
A way of starting a task you have been avoiding by doing small five-minute jobs on it in any order, so the task fills with holes until it is no longer intimidating. Alan Lakein named it in 1973 and called the small jobs instant tasks.
Does the Swiss cheese method work?
It has not been tested as a named method, so the honest answer is that its parts are well supported and the whole is not. Making a task smaller and more clearly achievable addresses two of the best-evidenced causes of delay, and specifying the exact small action improves follow-through. Whether attacking in random order helps beyond that is unknown.
How is it different from the two-minute rule?
The two-minute rule is about small tasks: if something takes under two minutes, do it now rather than listing it. The Swiss cheese method is about large tasks: break off five-minute pieces of something big and do those. One clears a list, the other opens a project.
What counts as an instant task?
Anything you could finish in about five minutes with no decisions left: open the document, find the reference number, write the subject line, list the three people to ask, put the title at the top of a blank page. If you have to work out how to do it first, it is too big to be a hole.