If you are someone who wants to beat procrastination, chances are you will have a long list of to-do items. The problem with most of the unproductive people, they are bad with dealing with their to-do lists. The best practice, as put by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done, is to regularly review this list and organize each item based on its contexts.
But, making a long to-do list and then spending hours organizing alone can be overwhelming and stressful. This is where David Allen's 2- minute rule becomes important. It makes your projects move forward incessantly and prevent many small things from overloading your system. Even if you don't follow his Getting Things Done (GTD) philosophy, by adopting 2- minute rule alone can make you far more productive and stress-free.
In the book, David Allen states, "if you determine an action can be done in two minutes, you actually should do it right then because it'll take longer to organize it and review it than it would be to actually finish it the first time you notice it." According to Allen, this is in essence, a mind hack. In an interview with Success magazine, Allen says, the rule "is actually tricking you into making an executive decision about what is the next thing that needs to happen."
So, next time when you are reviewing your to-do list, if a task takes 2- minutes or less - do it immediately. Whether it is sending an email, making a phone call or a quick Google search.
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