Concept
The two-minute rule
The two-minute rule is David Allen's instruction for processing an inbox: anything that would take less than two minutes to do is done immediately, because organising or deferring it would cost more than doing it. It clears the small tasks that procrastinators use as excuses and leaves a list of real work.
When the captured inbox is processed, each item is asked whether it is actionable and what the next action is. Allen's rule intercepts the small ones: reply to the message, book the appointment, file the receipt. Doing them at once has two effects. It removes the administrative overhead of tracking things that are faster to finish than to record, and it removes the procrastinator's favourite alibi, the pile of small tasks that feels like work and consumes the morning. What survives the rule is a shorter list of things that genuinely need a next action and a block of time. The rule is distinct from James Clear's two-minute version, which scales a large habit down to a two-minute start; Allen's clears the genuinely small, Clear's opens the door to the genuinely large.
A real-life example
An accountant in Bursa processes his inbox and finds that half of it is two-minute replies and bookings. Done in one sitting, they stop being the reason the quarterly filing waited, and the list that remains has eleven real items on it.
How to use it
- 1While processing the inbox, ask of each item: under two minutes? Then do it now.
- 2Do not record two-minute tasks; recording costs more than doing.
- 3Notice how much of your 'busy' morning was two-minute work standing in for the frog.