The Two-Minute Rule
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The two minutes rule states “If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it's defined.”
Proposed by David Allen, the goal the rule attempts to achieve is to help people beat procrastination by carrying out little tasks that require little time just as they pop up.
This avoids a build up of petty tasks, and frees your to-do list for other tasks that require more time commitment.
So, tasks like making your bed, replying a friend, throwing away the bin do not need to be written down on your to-do list since they take less than two minutes to be done.
However, it happens than many people misinterprete what the rule states and it becomes an excellent procrastination tool.
Here is how: If you stick to the two-minutes rule strictly, wanting to finish up every little task that comes up, you might end up spending your whole day in two minutes chunks filled with these little tasks. At the end, you get a super- busy day but not a well spent one. And all your main tasks for the day get procrastinated.
To get this clearer, here is an example you should picture:
You are just about to start studying for an exam coming up in few days, then you get a notification of a message from a friend. As an obedient fan of the two- minute rule, you decide to respond immediately since it will take you less than two minutes.
You open the message and your friend had sent a link to a YouTube video, and requested you should watch and feed him back. You hit the link and the duration of the video turns out to be less than two minutes so you hit the play button! Still in line with the rule afterall.
The video is a super- concise review of a self-help book from your favourite YouTuber, and you decide to go check it out immediately, get it on the net and add to your reading list. Yes, all these take less two minutes, so you think it is best to do it all immediately.
Next, to be sure the book worths your time, you open the book to read the reviews within the book— that's less than two minutes too! Plus, you are a gold medalist at speed reading.
Now, it is getting even more interesting as it turns out that one of the guys who wrote the best review has got a familiar name. But you can’t really tell much about the guy. Now, you are meeting the name again which is an excellent opportunity to find out who the guy is.
For writing a review for a bestseller, he must be famous for something. So you decide to look him up to see what he really does— in less than two minutes...
The chain continues and you spend an hour on thirty different “two- minute activities”.
While it was an excellent win for you— getting everything done immediately, and not piling it for later, that one hour still remains unproductive! Your primary task at hand was to study. You ended up procrastinating studying till an hour later— you leveraged the two-minute rule wrongly and it served as a tool for procrastination. This is relatable, right?
To apply the rule correctly for maximum productivity, here are two tips you should keep in mind:
The two minute rule should be applied only to tasks in line with your main productive tasks.
For instance, during the period you allocate to replying mails or messages, you should be quick to take advantage of the two minute rule to reply shorter messages— messages from friends and the ones that do not require long responses.
Other important ones that require longer responses can go into your to-do list, and be done later.
During window periods between tasks ( also called processing time), you should bank on the two minutes rule to get little things done quickly.
Processing time is the time you decide the next task you should carry out after a major task you just completed.
For instance, you just completed your chores for the day and the next is to study. Before studying, you should scope your topics and select the best resources to dig into. While you do this, you can employ the two minutes rule to do other little tasks like organizing your notes, quick revision of points, reviewing some Anki cards, and others.
Perfectionists and The Two- Minute Rule
If you are a perfectionist, you will be fast to agree that two minutes is definitely not enough for your most petty tasks. You love having everything flawless, and always on the lookout for errors. You always need more time for little tasks which you can't spare, the moment It pops up. So you put it off till later.
Perfectionists can be great procrastinators!
You keep adding every little task to your to-do list, saving it for later when you are high in energy to deliver flawlessly.
Eventually, you get stressed out and overwhelmed — which is what procrastination does.
To benefit from the Two- Minute Rule, you can start by working with a timer (you might not even need to), to ensure you are spending only a few minutes on little tasks while you still put in your best.
Being a master at this will help you get more time for demanding tasks, save your health from stress and hit your goals faster.
Spending more time is not even a requirement for perfection. What eventually matters is your result, not the million hours spent.
And it happens that the lesser the time you can spend getting things done perfectly ( or near perfect), the more the goals you accomplish. This defines the real perfection!
No time to check time, Tryber!
Yes, that was a wrap. Best wishes in applying the Two-Minute Rule in your daily activities!
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Thanks for reading. Until next time, stay good.
Thank you for the reminder. that's a clear example as an insight there.
This is for me actually 😪. Thanks a lot, I'll use the rule in the productive way.