Some tasks are better put off until higher-priority tasks are completed. If you’re working on a sales report, and suddenly think about researching a new car you’d like to buy, it’s best to put “Research car purchase” on your project list or “Look up Prius on ConsumerReports.com” on your @Computer list, and handle it later. The time and attention it would take away from finishing the sales report would make it counterproductive to do now.
But if an action is very short, it’s more efficient to do at once than add to a list. The Two Minute Rule is a guideline to keep your lists free of minutiae. The rule is simple:
If an action takes less than two minutes, do it now, even if it’s a low-priority item.
There’s simply no point in putting it off. Since a next action that’s not being done in the moment would otherwise need to be written down to stay out of your head, you need to think about whether or not it’s more efficient to add it to a next action list, or to get it done once and for all. At two minutes or less, it would take longer to write an action down, review it later, and check it off than it would be to just do it in the first place.
There’s another advantage to applying the Two Minute Rule. By consciously asking yourself, “Will this take more than two minutes?”, you’re less likely to become engrossed to relatively short actions aren’t short enough to prevent becoming digressions. Is that “quick lookup” on Wikipedia really a two minute action? Reading the article might take a few more minutes than expected. It might be more strategic to look up the article, print it, put it in a Read/Review folder, and read it when you have more time and attention to devote. The Two Minute Rule is a guard against serial digression — “rabbit trails.”
One frequent reservation about the Two Minute Rule is that a person risks spending all day on small items, never getting to the larger, more important ones. The first question that needs to be asked about any action is: Does this need to be done it all? If the answer is yes, the only alternatives are to do it now, or write it down for doing later. The more items you see on your list, the more likely you are to resist looking at the list, even if half the items on it could be done in 30 minutes combined.
Second, the number of items that actually take less than two minutes is much smaller in reality than it is intellectually when you apply the rule for each action as it comes up. The whole idea of spending “all day” doing two minute actions is based on assumption, not putting the rule into practice.
Third, just because an action is short doesn’t make it unimportant. Not taking one minute to approve a purchase order can hold up a very large project. It’s not uncommon for sizable project to get held up for hours or days simply because someone shoved the paperwork involved to one side, and didn’t look to see that all that was required on it was a signature. I once took over a job processing orders in 10 minutes that the previous employee kept piled for an average of four days.
With email, it’s critical do decide whether or not a message can be answered or addressed in two minutes or less. Email accumulates too quickly to simply gaze at each message without making a decision about it. Decide now if an email can be trashed, archived, addressed or answered in two minutes. If not, immediately identify the outcome and next action required, and place them on your project/next actions list.
Comments
Vered
// Apr 20, 2008 at 5:09 pm
I think that’s a great rule. If you don’t mind, when applying it, I am going to turn it into a FIVE-minute rule.
Thanks!
Andre Kibbe
// Apr 20, 2008 at 6:09 pm
Five minutes is fine. The two minute convention was designed mainly with inbox processing in mind. If you have 38 items in your intray, you’ll know that processing it to zero will take a maximum of 76 minutes, since each processed item will go on a project or action list, be filed, discarded, delegated or done in two minutes. In practice, it would almost never take 76 minutes, since some items will be dispensed with or dispatched in seconds.
The two minute convention matters more in an office than in other situations. If you have more time available and fewer distractions (like working on a plane), doing a five or ten minute action is probably more efficient than putting in on a list.
I work at home and no longer have new inputs and interruptions coming at me from moment to moment, so I don’t have to strictly work the two minute rule so literally. But I usually do anyway, because I find that two minutes won’t take much attention way from a higher priority task, but anything longer risks breaking my focus.
Peter Atomic
// Apr 22, 2008 at 3:35 pm
I have been using this concept (un)consciously now for years and it works wonders. My clients often remark at how fast I am on their projects and I think its usually because I can filter tasks in my head quite effectively, whereas I notice others tend to circle in loops and spend more time thinking about what needs to get done instead of crossing things off their list.
Art Deco
// Apr 23, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Andre
Saw your post at Caroline’s blog and thought I’d drop by to see what your site is about. I like this rule a lot, and probably have been following it (unconsciously and successfully) for years. But ‘a quick phone call’ can turn into a half hour on hold trying to reach a human. So now it is a five minute task without touching a phone.
Andre Kibbe
// Apr 24, 2008 at 2:27 am
The value in consciously asking if an action will take less than two minutes is that it gives you a moment to reflect on “quick” actions realistically, before commiting to something that in hindsight was obviously conditional or open-ended.
The only calls I would proceed with that I could be reasonably certain would take less than two minutes would be (1) calls intended to go to voice mail, (2) directory assistance and (3) a friend whom I knew was available for a one-sentence answer. Customer service calls are out of the question. I would immediately write those down on my @Calls context list.
The Two Minute Rule isn’t just for deciding to do things now. It’s also for deciding to put things on a calendar or action list.
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