The 2-Day Rule: Force Yourself to Stay Consistent

The hidden evil behind holidays and resting for a long time

Halim Shams
4 min readDec 4, 2023
An Article by — Halim Shams

Every human being has a bad habit, and they’re aiming to get rid of it at any cost as it prevents them from living a happy and fulfilled life.

When I was new to programming, one of the worst habits I found myself struggling with the most was being completely lazy and unmotivated to get back to my tasks after a holiday, especially the ones that lasted for several days.

In every culture and religion, we have some holidays in a year that last for multiple days rather than just a single day—in Islam, there’s Eid, in Christianity, there’s Christmas, in Hinduism, there’s Diwali or Holi, and the list goes on.

For years, long vacations were one of the main obstacles for me, and they were the only reason that didn’t allow me to keep up with the progress I was making.

Typically, I feel extremely discouraged after an extended holiday. Prior to the holiday, I had been at the peak of my productivity and facing challenges. However, when this prolonged holiday arrives, it tends to drain away all my motivation and energy.

My state pre-holiday and post-holiday

There isn’t a single human on earth who’d hate holidays, but quite contrary to them, I was the only one in my entire family who hated holidays due to the outcomes they brought along after their ending.

After an extended holiday, I would typically find myself feeling stuck for about a week. However, gradually I would return to my usual routine and resume my tasks, such as continuing with my partially developed coding projects or diving back into a book.

That was when I discovered “The 2-Day Rule” to overcome this major issue I had with the holidays, and it utterly shifted the way I was used to treating holidays and vacations.

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The 2-Day Rule

The 2-day rule encourages you to not give up on any task that truly matters to you for two days in a row. It doesn’t matter how you feel or what state you are in, whether it’s a holiday or even your wedding. If there are tasks that hold significant importance to you and you wish to avoid abandoning them, the rule advises against halting your efforts for a continuous 2-day duration.

You have the permission to leave it for a day—we as human beings were not born to act like machines—there's no need to threaten thyself for not doing it just for a single day, but if, for any stupid reason, you brush that activity aside for two days in a row, congrats, you’re now a lazy little loser.

I’ve not only implemented this to my coding sessions but also to other aspects of my life as well, take it from hitting the gym, reading books, to learning new skills and so on…

Your Task

Identify some of the most crucial tasks and activities that you don’t want to abandon at any cost. These could include reading books, coding, learning new skills, going to the gym, juggling, or whatever else it may be.

Keep those tasks somewhere safe in your brain, and if you find yourself forgetting them, you may even engrave them on your brain so that you don’t forget them.

Next, whenever there’s an extended holiday or whatever hell you know, that can hold you back from doing your most crucial tasks and activities. Just let it hold you for a day, but if it persists in holding you back the following day, don’t let it hold you back. Beat that bi*h, loose yourself from it, and do your task anyway, no matter what.

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Halim Shams
Halim Shams

Written by Halim Shams

I Write about Programming and All the Related Content 🚀 I'm a Self-Taught Full-Stack Developer 💛

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