Handling New Stuff: 2 Minute Rule

Humans have a powerful drive for self-preservation, with our brains always watching out for danger. Evolution taught us that anything new might be dangerous because in caveman days, the rustle in the bushes might be something life-threatening like a saber-tooth tiger. Since evolution programmed our brains to believe that anything new could be dangerous and therefore is important, we have a strong urge to immediately address anything new. Without a tool to help, you may torpedo your plan for the day to jump on each new thing that comes up from a call or email. Each time you react to something new may seem like it’s not a big deal, but collectively, all these knee-jerk reactions will destroy your careful plan to take your most important actions for the day.

A simple technique will help you overcome this urge. First, you apply the 2 Minute Rule: If the action will take less than 2 minutes, just do it. That’s because managing the to-do will take you longer than 2 minutes. The 2 Minute Rule includes reading and replying to emails, but only if that will take less than 2 minutes to reply to that email. So if reading a long email or an article or replying to an email likely will take longer than 2 minutes, then you do not do it.

This brings us back to the Happiful Planner. In the bottom right corner is the “New, Unplanned Action Items” section. This is where you will write down any new actions that come up during the next day, from a call, an email, a meeting, or just an idea or realization you had of something you should do.

So, now you have a rule and a tool for dealing with new items: when a new unplanned action arises, instead of dumping your plan for the day and jumping on it, you write it down in this New, Unplanned Actions section.

Then, determine whether it HAS to be done today. If yes, then you number it as though you had known about it when you made up and numbered your Success Plan yesterday. So the new action item might be numbered 4.1 because it has to be done today and if you’d known about it yesterday, it fell in importance between #4 and #5.

At the end of the day, the actions that didn’t have to be done today will go into Remember The Milk.

This process overcomes the natural urge to do anything new right away and instead puts all of these proposed actions on a level playing field with every other action you might take. This process makes a huge difference in keeping you on your plan for the day. I’ve heard from some super-organized people that the 2 Minute Rule was a valuable addition to their toolkit, so I highly recommend you build the habit of following the Rule.