Why two minutes and not thirty

The aversiveness peaks before you start, not while you are working. Twenty minutes in, the essay is just an essay. It is the approach that hurts.

So the first action has to be small enough to walk past the peak. Two minutes of reading is small enough that the part of you that argues cannot get a grip on it. There is no case to make against two minutes.

Most of the time you keep going, because the thing that was blocking you was the doorway and you are now through it. Sometimes you do two minutes and stop. That still counts, and it is important that it counts, because a two minute start that you are secretly required to turn into an hour is not a two minute start. It is an hour wearing a disguise, and the part of you that argues will notice by Thursday.