The Daily Exorcism for Tiny Demons
Future You isn’t coming to save you.
That text you’ve been avoiding for three weeks?
You know exactly which one. You just felt it in your chest. That little clench. The one your therapist would probably have thoughts about.
The message would take three minutes to answer. Maybe five if you really committed to overthinking it. (You would. We both know you would.) Instead, you’ve invested roughly nineteen days of low-grade psychological torment into not dealing with it.
Congratulations. You’ve turned a Post-it Note into a hostage situation.
But here’s where it gets properly absurd: that text is just one gravestone in the cemetery you’re maintaining in your skull. There’s also the call to your bank you’ve rescheduled in your head fourteen times. The email that needs a one-line response sitting there like an accusation. The form that takes ninety seconds to complete but has somehow achieved immortality in your to-do list.
Each one is a demon. Small. Patient. Feeding on your attention while you pretend they don’t exist.
(Spoiler: They exist. They’re winning.)
The Beautiful Lie We Tell Ourselves
“I’ll handle it when I have more energy.”
“Future Me will be in a better headspace.”
“It’s fine, I work better under pressure anyway.”
Future You is not coming.
Future You has the exact same twenty-four hours, the same aversion to mildly uncomfortable tasks, the same talent for elaborate self-deception. The only difference is Future You also carries the accumulated guilt from Past You’s cowardice.
(Past You, if you’re listening: you’re an asshole. But we forgive you. Mostly.)
The task doesn’t get easier with time. This isn’t wine. It doesn’t improve with age. It stays precisely as easy as it was on Day One while your feelings about it curdle into something genuinely unpleasant.
The Vampire Economics of Tiny Tasks
Every undone micro-task extracts a tax.
Not when you finally do it. Right now. Today. Yesterday. Every day you don’t do it.
Think of it as rent your brain pays on things it hasn’t dealt with. A small apartment in your consciousness, occupied by a task that takes four minutes but charges you daily.
The tax looks like:
Background guilt (subtle but constant, like a neighbor playing terrible music at just-audible volume)
The “should I do it now?” debate every time you scroll past it (you won’t, but you’ll have the conversation with yourself anyway)
Mental bandwidth consumed by simply remembering it exists
The slow relationship erosion when other humans are involved (they’ve noticed your silence, by the way)
One task? Barely registers. Five tasks? You’re tired by noon and can’t explain why. Fifteen tasks? You’re paralyzed, everything feels overwhelming, and you’ve started telling people you’re “just really busy right now.”
You’re not busy. You’re haunted.
The math is stupid. A task that takes five minutes to complete costs you five minutes of guilt per day. After two weeks, you’ve paid seventy minutes of mental rent on something that would’ve taken three hundred seconds to resolve.
(If anyone ran their finances like this, we’d stage an intervention.)
The 5-Minute Exorcism
Here’s the protocol. Five minutes a day. Every day. Same time.
That’s the whole commitment. It’s embarrassingly small. Which is the point. (Remember: aim low, but fucking aim.)
The Scan (60 seconds)
Close your eyes. Ask yourself: “What tiny thing am I avoiding right now?”
Don’t check a list. Feel for it. Your brain knows. Something just surfaced. That clench happened again.
There’s your demon.
Pick One (10 seconds)
Whatever came up first. That’s the one. The thing causing the most background noise always surfaces fastest.
Don’t strategize. Don’t prioritize. This isn’t project management. This is pest control.
Execute (3-4 minutes)
Timer on. Do the thing.
Reply to the message. (Terrible draft first, find the one true sentence, send before your inner editor wakes up.) Make the call. (Script the first sentence, dial while reading it, the rest handles itself.) Fill out the form. (Opening it is the hardest part. Congratulations. You’ve already peaked.)
No prep. No optimization. Just execution.
Note It (30 seconds)
Somewhere (I use a note called “Exorcised” because I’m that person now), write the date and what you did.
This isn’t productivity tracking. It’s evidence collection. After a week, you’ll see patterns. After a month, you’ll have proof you’re not as stuck as you feel.
The Demon Field Guide (Know Your Enemy)
Different demons require slightly different exorcism techniques. Here’s the field guide:
The Reply Demon (messages you owe people)
These are the most common haunting. The cure is simple: write a terrible first draft. Don’t think about it. Just vomit words onto the screen. Somewhere in that garbage is one honest sentence. Find it. Build around it. Send before you start editing.
(Editing is where you’ll spiral. Editing is the demon’s friend.)
Most replies need two sentences. You’re not writing policy documents. You’re being a functional human.
The Call Demon (calls you’re avoiding)
Script the first sentence. Just the first one. “Hi, I’m calling because [thing].” Then dial while reading it. Before your brain catches up and invents seventeen reasons to postpone.
The dread lives in anticipation. The actual call is almost always easier than you imagined. (The person on the other end is also just a person. Usually bored. Often relieved you’re not yelling.)
The Form Demon (bureaucracy lurking in your browser tabs)
Opening the form is the hardest part. Not filling it out. Opening it. The actual fields take ninety seconds.
So open it. Set a five-minute timer. Submit before the timer ends, even if imperfect. Nobody’s grading these. Nobody cares if your handwriting equivalent is slightly off.
The Decision Demon (choices living in limbo)
Set a two-minute timer. Decide before it ends.
The decision doesn’t need to be optimal. It needs to be made. “Good enough now” beats “perfect eventually” every single time. And most decisions are reversible anyway, despite what your anxiety suggests.
(Your anxiety is not a reliable narrator. Stop treating it like one.)
The Prevention Protocol (Stop Making New Ghosts)
The daily exorcism clears existing haunts. But new demons spawn constantly. Here’s how to kill them before they settle in:
The Two-Minute Rule (stolen from David Allen, works perfectly)
If it takes less than two minutes, do it immediately. No list. No “later.” No internal negotiation.
This prevents eighty percent of demon accumulation. Most of the things haunting you right now could’ve been handled in the moment they arrived.
The 48-Hour Window (this one’s mine)
If it takes two to ten minutes but you genuinely can’t do it now, it has forty-eight hours to live. Either it gets done in that window, or it goes on the daily exorcism queue.
No task floats indefinitely. Everything has a deadline or a scheduled execution.
The “Is This Actually Small?” Checkpoint
Some things feel like micro-tasks but aren’t. If it requires research, multiple steps, emotional labor beyond ten minutes (real emotional labor, not just mild discomfort), it’s not a micro-task. It’s a project. Move it to your actual project list.
Don’t let big tasks cosplay as small ones. That’s how they ambush you mid-exorcism.
What Actually Happens When You Do This
I started the daily exorcism two months ago.
Didn’t believe in it. Thought I was too far gone. (Narrator: He was not.)
Week one felt pointless. Five minutes? One task? This changes nothing.
Week two, I noticed I was less tired. Couldn’t explain it. Just... lighter.
Week four, I realized the background hum of guilt I’d accepted as normal had quieted. Not gone. But quieter. The constant low-frequency anxiety about Things I Should Be Doing had dropped several decibels.
(Turns out that hum costs more than you realize until it’s reduced. Like living next to train tracks. You stop hearing it. But your nervous system doesn’t.)
The demons I clear now are younger. A day old. Two days. Not three weeks of accumulated shame walking around in a task’s clothing.
It’s not perfect. Some days I skip it. New demons still spawn. The graveyard isn’t empty.
But it’s manageable now. Maintained. Like a garden you actually tend instead of a lot you pretend doesn’t exist.
Your Turn (Right Now, Not Later)
Before you close this email. Before “later.” Before Future You inherits another problem.
Close your eyes. Ask: What tiny thing am I avoiding right now?
Something surfaced. I know it did.
Set a timer for five minutes. Do the damned thing. Note what it was and how long it actually took.
That’s your first exorcism. Welcome to the practice.
Tomorrow, same time, perform the ritual. Then another.
The demons don’t leave on their own. They wait. The exorcism is the only thing that works.
Reply with your first exorcism: What was the demon, and how long did it actually take?
Mine was a one-line WhatsApp reply I’d been avoiding for four days. Took twenty-two seconds. The avoidance had cost approximately thirty minutes of background guilt.
The math is always absurd. So it goes.
Fixed (for now),
Nick “Daily Exorcist” Quick
PS…My “Exorcised” note now has 49 entries. Forty-nine tiny things that would have become medium-sized haunts, then large regrets, then full relationship casualties. All of them took under five minutes. Most took under three. The cumulative guilt I didn’t carry? Incalculable. The smugness of scrolling through proof that I’m not a complete disaster? Priceless. Worth it for that alone, honestly.
PPS...Next Monday—fitness advice from someone who once bought running shoes, displayed them beautifully, and never put them on. Five minutes. One movement. No gym. No spandex. No dignity required. The Five-Minute Movement. I’m writing these way more often than any reasonable person should. Subscribe so you don’t miss the chaos.
Loving the illustrations, Nick!