How to productively knock out those 2-minute tasks

Blocking out time on our calendar is great for diving deep into specific tasks. But you might be thinking, what about the many tasks on our plates each day? You know, the ones that require but a few minutes, that you can knock out in around two minutes? What should we do then?

Author and productivity consultant David Allen is famous for his “2-minute rule.” The rule is: "If it takes less than two minutes, then do it now." The reason for this is simple. For many of these tasks, like replying to an email or calling someone back, the effort needed to keep remembering them, or even to write them down in a way that you’ll actually remember later, exceeds just getting them out of the way.

Quit Repeating Yourself!

You’ll often hear productivity experts (this author included) preach the need to “work smarter, not harder.” But what does that mean, in practical terms?

Computer programmers have an answer with a concept they use to write more efficient code: Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY). In software engineering, DRY is the principle of reducing repetition in the code, referring to a single source—or "snippet"—of reusable code whenever you need it.

While the Don’t Repeat Yourself technique (or DRY Principle) was made famous by coders, it is easily applicable to non-programmers alike.

To conquer your day, wake up early

When I was growing up, there was one advertisement that would consistently grab your attention. In it, U.S. Army personnel were up super early, engaged in all sorts of high-energy training and action tasks. The tagline was, “we do more by 9 AM than most people do all day.”

While I never joined the Armed Forces, intuitively my little brain knew that they were on to something.

That’s because if you want to get more done, you need to start your day early.

Go all in on your tasks

Now that we’ve focused on removing distractions and blocking out time, the next step is to go all in on specific tasks (“single-tasking”) and avoid multitasking like the plague.

Multitasking refers to when we try to achieve multiple things simultaneously, such as returning calls or listening to messages while reviewing and editing reports. It has become widely popular as we perceive that doing more things at one time is better than doing fewer things.

Schedule tasks and block out time

The reason why time-blocking works is simple. When a task is jotted down on a list, odds are that it will take a while for it to be completed (many listed tasks never get done at all.) Or you may choose to work on the list “top down” even when items that are further below will deliver stronger benefits.

When a task gets scheduled, however, you are committing to getting that specific thing completed at a particular time and expect to have it finished when the period has ended. In effect, you’re telling yourself, “This one task is of great importance to me, and I will devote time and singular focus to it, to the exclusion of everything else.” It is as if you’ve created a meeting with yourself that cannot be interrupted. You prepare yourself mentally for the task and go all in.

How to remove distractors from your workday

When people transition their attention away from an unfinished task to attend to a distraction, they lose time, and their subsequent task performance suffers. For example, if you interrupt writing an email to reply to a text message, you will need to refocus when you turn your attention back to finishing your email. That little bit of time of adjusting your focus compounds throughout the day. As we fragment our attention, fatigue and stress increases, which negatively affects performance.

So, not surprisingly, the first component of this “do it” step is to remove distractors.

Why and how leaders can monitor and review

As each project is unfolding, stay on top of things and correct or redirect when necessary. This motivates colleagues (who don’t feel abandoned) and helps you catch problems early on. Recognize key milestones, such as completed steps and sub-components, along the way. Obviously, inexperienced colleagues will need more direction, tighter controls and oversight than seasoned ones.

Blazing Your Own Path to Success

Did you ever look around in amazement at people around you that don’t appear to be all that extraordinary yet have achieved extraordinary things? These are people who have greatly succeeded in business, in politics, in the arts, in sports, or in some other space, but in many respects seem pretty much on par with you (or even inferior to you) in terms of their core abilities and talents. How is it, you wonder, that they “made it” in such a robust manner while you continue to middle along in relative obscurity, earning a pedestrian income and feeling somewhat unfulfilled?

Be Prepared to Delegate

Delegation offers many benefits to managers, direct reports and organizations. And yet it remains one of the most misunderstood and underutilized techniques in leadership practice.

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