26th
The Diamond in the "Getting Things Done" Rough
After about a year and a half of wresting with David Allen’s critically-acclaimed self-help book, Getting Things Done, I can confidently say that the recommended organization system is impossible to keep up with for all but the most impressively disciplined / insanely masochistic amongst us.
Was it all a waste of time? The answer would probably be yes except there is one simple and completely realistic piece of advice in the book that dramatically improved my efficiency. I now recommend it to everyone:
- If you find out you need to do something that will take you less than two minutes to complete, do it right there and then
That’s it. Simple and realistic.
If you don’t take care of that small task immediately, it will sit in the back of your mind and rot. You will spend many more minutes constantly reminding yourself of having to take care of it instead of creatively thinking about your business / life. Also, reminding yourself of things you have to do are not exactly “happy” thoughts. Eventually, you will either end up taking care of it or, more likely, forgetting about it all together.
Do yourself a favor and start taking care of those 2 minute tasks as soon as you become aware of them. I briefly flirted with the idea of raising the bar to 5 minutes, but it almost killed me.
