I’ve been busy this week with a rush of business items landing on my desk via phone and e-mail. Added to that are all kinds of year-end forms, reports and unfinished business resulting from the “we’ll take care of it after the Holidays” rationalization.
Earlier this week, if my desk top was an airport runway, air traffic control would have shut it down for safety reasons. Piles of papers and mail, post-it notes and a full e-mail box were like planes trapped in Chicago at O’Hare in a blizzard. Nothing was moving, frustration was high and some heavy duty equipment was necessary for clearing the wrath of the blizzard.
I needed to sweep the paper and electronic blizzards on my desk top and computer screen, so I reached for one of the best pieces of equipment a business person can own.
A special book.
Now, taking time to read a book in an office work firefight sounds silly at first, but David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” is a must read for the those who want to be more productive without creating more stress to go along with it.
I re read the chapter on processing the inflow of work.
Allen makes a case for his “two minute rule” to get things out of the way and off your list of things to do. His two minute rule is simple.
If the next action on your list can be done in two minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item up. As an example, if you need to call someone and leave a message about a horse, client or meetings, make the call. Browse the catalogs for items of interest and toss them or file them. If it is a yes or no e-mail question, hit reply, type a sentence and be done with it.
It takes more time to track and carry a two minute task than to just get it done. But if you’re like me, you often labor carrying buckets and buckets of “little tasks” forward each working day.
Your day is filled with dedicated time slots for lessons, training and client work. The opportunity to respond to phone messages, e-mails and read snail mail is restricted to the few and short blocks of time between committed hours and half hours. When you apply the two minute rule as you sort through these tasks (the blizzard) you’ll find that you’ll begin to feel better about your productivity as you lighten the list of nagging items.
There is great satisfaction in crossing through or checking off even the smallest of items on the long list screaming for your attention. When you’re done reading this newsletter, why not take care of a few two minute items?