What Is the 2-Minute Rule Anyway?
Many productivity experts talk about the “two-minute rule”, which dictates if a task will take 2 minutes or less to complete, rather than defer and push it off until later (whenever that may be), you should do it now.
Recently, I received an inquiry from another experienced professional organizer. She was partially playing devil’s advocate but also wanted a measurable answer to the question: “How do you know when something will take 2 minutes or less?” So, I set off on a quest to find a clear, defined response. While I’m not there yet, I did come across a fabulous and thorough post exploring frequently asked questions about the 2-minute rule from Tools-for-Thought.com. Andre Kibbe begins with a little bit of history behind the “2-minute rule”:
“The two-minute rule was originated by business consultant Dean Acheson (no relation to the former Secretary of State), then incorporated into the Time/Design (Time/system in the US) methodology and later picked up by David Allen for GTD.
Acheson, who also coined the Next Action technique, would guide his clients through an in-basket processing session by having them ask of a next action, “Is it a short action?” If the answer was yes, the rule was to do it immediately rather than write it down for later review or action. Later, as Acheson came to realize that “short” was overly subjective, he changed the framing question to, “Can this be done in less than two minutes?”
Read the rest of the article here.