Nitu MohankaI help ambitious Leaders go from feeling Stuck, Stressed & Overwhelmed to get Clarity, Confidence & Growth leading to 2X their income in just 9 weeks using simple Mindset Techniques | Life Coach | #1 Bestselling Author

20 Seconds Rule to make or break a Habit. #hacks #habits #rules #growthmindset #lifeisbutadream

19 Sept 2026 · 1 min

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1:13

In this short motivational video, Nitu Mohanka explains the "20‑second rule," a claim that any mental trigger—such as a notification or a sudden urge—remains influential for roughly 20 seconds before its effect fades. She illustrates how waiting out a food‑ordering notification for 20 seconds can diminish the impulse to order, and suggests deleting the app to remove the trigger entirely. Conversely, she shows how to harness the same 20‑second window to initiate a desired habit, like putting on running shoes immediately after feeling the urge to run, thereby converting the fleeting motivation into concrete action. The video ends with a call for viewers to try the technique and share results in the comments.

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Any trigger in our brain stays for 20 seconds. That is the optimum time a trigger can stay in our mind. So say, for example, you received a notification— that's a trigger. That would trigger you for the next 20 seconds to take an action. If you got a trigger from, say, Swiggy and you want to order a food, all you need to do is just wait for 20 seconds for that trigger to pass, and you will see that you do not want to order the food It was only a trigger that was wanting you to make order in the first place. And the best hack is to just delete the app so that there is no trigger itself. But yes, if you have to keep it, try to hold it for 20 seconds and see if this helps. It works the other way around as well. Say for example, you have to go out for run in the morning and you just felt that, okay, I should go for a run. And then after 20 seconds you would feel, uh, okay, it's too painful, let's not do it. What you can do is in that 20 seconds of the trigger that you got, just get up and wear your shoes. That's all you need to do. And see that if your mind gets ready to go out for the run, use that window of 20 seconds and take all the positives of this knowledge to your advantage. Let me know in the comments if it worked for you. Take care. All the best.