GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools – The Two-Minute Rule

The Quality Manager — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Would you like to extend your life by 6 months? Then follow this simple rule: “If you can get an action done in less than two minutes then do it now!”

This works because it will take you longer than two minutes to write it down on one of your lists of NEXT ACTIONs, recall it when it’s appropriate, figure what it’s about and get in done – so just do it, or as someone I knew used to say JUST F****** DO IT or JFDI.

This can be as simple an action as “I need to refill my fountain pen”. By the time you’ve written that on your list you could have done it so just do it!

Once you’ve got to the DO phase you’ve only three options:

DO it now if the action takes less than two minutes.
DELEGATE it to someone else if you’re not the most appropriate person to do it.
DEFER it by putting it into your system on one of your CONTEXT lists as something to be done later.

Some people seem to get hung up on what they can do in exactly two-minutes. It’s not the time that’s important, it’s the principle. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a minute or ten – it’s just a rule of thumb. If you think you can get it done “in the moment” then get it done and out of the way.

It’s a useful technique to use when you’re doing your WEEKLY REVIEW. You may want to restrict the cutoff to one minute if you haven’t got much time or extend it to ten if you’ve got plenty of time.

The two minutes isn’t a hard and fast(!) 120 seconds. Use your common sense. Perhaps another way to phrase the rule is “if you can do the action in less time than it would take to put it on your list, retrieve it at a later date, and do it then. Do it now”

If you use the GTD Outlook Add-In then the latest version has a built-in Two Minute Timer and the David Allen Company has one in their store.

Process

The Quality Manager — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 07:00:00 +0000

Before you can get ORGANISEd, you need to PROCESS the information that you have COLLECTed.

You need to decide what each item means to you by asking firstly – “Is it actionable?” – that is, is it something that you need to take action on, or do something about?

1. NOT ACTIONABLE

Is it reference material? If so file it as reference material in an A-Z Filing System. We will come back to the best ways to do this at a later date. For now if you don’t have a filing system put it in another in-tray labelled “Reference”.
Is it something you don’t need to do anything about just now but you’d like to be reminded of it at a later date? For example, menus for Christmas or New Year meal that you may want to book. These sort of items go into a Bring Forward (or Tickler File). Again we will talk more about these at a later date. For now put them in another in-tray labelled “Bring Forward” or “Tickler”.
Finally, in the Non-Actionable, is it something you no longer need? In this case bin it now!

2. ACTIONABLE

Is this something you can defer until a later date – a reminder to pay a bill for example. This can then go into your Bring Forward file to be actioned on that date.
Is this something you can delegate to someone else to do? If it is put it in a pile labelled “Delegate to”.
Is this something you need to do? If it is you have two choices. 1. If it will take less than two minutes to do then do it now because it will take more time to write it down and pcik it up again! 2. If it will take longer than two minutes then what’s the next physical action you need to take on this to move it forward? Write this down on a list as an action, for example, “Call Fred about Jane’s school report”.

In dealing with the ACTIONABLE items, think about what outcome you seek for the item that you originally COLLECTed. What does DONE look like? The next physical action is about DOING something that will get something DONE.

If that one next physical action will get the item done then you can discard the item you COLLECTed. But if it will take more than one action to get something done then you have a PROJECT and as well as listing the next physical action on a list you need to put the PROJECT on a list of PROJECTs so that you’re reminded that it’s not finished yet. Then you can discard the COLLECTed item.

Next time we’ll look at ORGANISE where you put the items you COLLECT and PROCESSed into a trusted system that will help you with Getting Things Done.

As last time, you can get an overview of the Five Phases of Mastering Workflow from David Allen’s site for free!

Parker Quality Consultants » Delegate

GTD Tips, Tricks and Tools – The Two-Minute Rule

Process