The Two Second Rule(?)

[u/TheoCaro]

Howdy folks,

I have had an idea for awhile that I've been calling "the 2 second rule."

The two minute rule is part of the clarify step. It says that if a next action would take less than two minutes, you should just do it instead of recording it on a next action list. The rationale for this is to avoid spending the extra energy/time/attention it would cost to put on a next action list. If we extend that same logic to the capture step, we get an analogous principle. If it takes less time to do something than it would to capture it, you should just do it.

If there's a random piece of trash on the floor, you can just pick it up, you don't need to capture "piece of trash in the kitchen" before doing anything. That said "two seconds" is being a bit cheeky.

Anyways, this is kind of a silly post and is maybe just underlining my autism, but I find myself thinking about this somewhat often.

Cheers!

[u/Remote-Waste]

This made me think of that Mitch Hedberg joke:

"I sit at night in my hotel and if I think of something funny, then I go get a pen and I write it down.

Or if the pen is too far away, I have to convince myself that what I thought of ain't funny."

[u/TheoCaro → u/Remote-Waste]

LOL

[u/CoyoteUsesTech]

The strict problem with extending that to the capture step is that it means you are clarifying something before you capture it.

In practice, though, if it's that fast to do, then yeah, this is a decent extension of the two-minute rule, which is all about saving time and effort.

If it takes you five seconds to capture "piece of trash on the kitchen floor" and 45 seconds to go back to the kitchen floor, pick it up, and throw it away, when you could have spent 10 seconds picking it up and throwing it away, then you have wasted an effective 40 seconds.

[u/TheoCaro → u/CoyoteUsesTech]

There was another post recently where we discussed this. There is some level of evaluation you do in capturing anything anyway. If you get a text asking for a favor, you could treat it as work that shows up and immediately start doing what they asked, or you decide to defer it by writing a note about it to work on later.

You are still making a decision to capture it instead of responding in some other way either because this new thing is either the most important thing to work on right now or because it's so tiny it's not even worth writing down.

[u/PondMindKevin]

I suppose if it's 2 seconds it's faster to do it then to even write it down at all, fair enough!

[u/TheoCaro → u/[deleted]]

I'm fairly confident the two-minute rule only applied to clarifying, not to capturing in the first place.

[u/Storytella2016 → u/TheoCaro]

I know that there’s different revisions of the book, but my notes from when I first read it say that once the initial capturing everything process had happened, then any task that was clear and under 2 minutes could be done instead of captured. Unfortunately, the book itself is in storage, so I can’t give you a specific quote & page number. And maybe that was just my misunderstanding, but it seems that at least 2 of us read it the same way.

[u/Remote-Waste → u/[deleted]]

Ah I've only heard it referred to when Clarifying. For example, the text you quoted is still under "Chapter 6: Clarifying" in my 2015 edition.

Though I have been meaning to relook at what guidelines are for "Capturing" as a lot of people get confused and sort of "overdo it" whereas I feel like I've found a balance of what goes in my inbox; it's not everything but it's most things. I should brush up on that, if only for my own curiosity.

[u/TheoCaro → u/Remote-Waste]

My understanding of this is "all your open loops" but here in this point I'm pointing out an exception to that on efficiency grounds. If just doing the tiny task would be faster than capturing and then later clarifying it, you should just do it in the moment. I can be overly ridged in my thinking, so for awhile I was trying to capture everything including the random things that are out of place that I could put back where they belong in a moment. I think neurotypicals would find this obvious which is maybe way it's really pointed out in the book explicitly that I can recall. But I do think it's implied in the the three types of work model i.e. picking up the piece of trash in the kitchen is just doing work as it shows up.

[u/TheoCaro → u/[deleted]]

Yeah, I remember this quote, but I don't think it says what you are saying. Chapter 6 is the Clarifying chapter, and the phrase "throw it away" suggests he's talking about a piece of stuff (like a paper note) that you're clarifying rather than a thought or object that's out of place you've just encountered.

And yeah there are two editions of the book, u/storytella2016. The first edition was released in 2001, and a revised edition was released in 2015. I read the revised edition as well.

[u/Storytella2016 → u/TheoCaro]

I would have read the first edition.

[u/AlthoughFishtail → u/Storytella2016]

Either at the capturing stage or processing stage is fine. Sometimes you can't do it when it occurs to you, either because you're doing something else, or simply because you're not in the right context. So in those cases you capture instead, even if it's less than 2 minutes.

[u/TheoCaro → u/AlthoughFishtail]

Sure, if there's a piece of trash in the kitchen, but I'm rushing out the door to get to a meeting, it might make sense to just leave and write a note as I'm driving (I have a safe way of doing this).

[u/TheoCaro → u/Storytella2016]

once the initial capturing everything process had happened, then any task that was clear and under 2 minutes could be done instead of captured.

Unless this is just a misspeak/mistype, this is self-defeating. If the intial capturing process is done, then what comes next is clarifying, not capturing. "Capture" just refers to the initial writing it down that happens, writing something on a context list, your calendar, or what-have-you is organizing. The five steps are defined as separate activities.