Use the Two-Minute Rule To Stop Procrastinating

Nestled within 267 pages of David Allen’s famous time management book, Getting Things Done, is a powerful and often overlooked productivity tactic. Between advice on painstakingly setting up the right buckets for your tasks and implementing a comprehensive weekly review where you “get clear, get current, and get creative”, he shares a technique you can use immediately –– the two-minute rule:

“If an action will take less than two minutes, it should be done at the moment it’s defined.”

Simple, yet potent, this rule is a defense against procrastination and letting the small things in work and life add up. Following this guideline can spring us into action, completing tasks quickly instead of leaving them forever undone.

As simple as the two-minute rule sounds, it’s worth understanding Allen’s reasoning behind the concept and why it’s such an effective tool in your productivity arsenal:

“If the next action can be done in two minutes or less, do it when you first pick the item up…The rationale for the two-minute rule is that it’s more or less the point where it starts taking longer to store and track an item than to deal with it the first time it’s in your hands—in other words, it’s the efficiency cutoff.”

Often it’s small tasks that pile up on our to-do lists, fill us with dread, and eventually feel insurmountable. Generally speaking, responding to an email, watering a plant, tidying your desk, filing a receipt, or wiping down a mirror are all tasks you can complete in 120 seconds or less. But, taken together and left to collect, they add up to a laundry list of chores that we continually put off. As a result, we spend more time and energy thinking about how we haven’t done them yet and feeling guilty about it than we would have spent just doing the things in the first place.

This article dives into the advantages of completing quick tasks as they arise, precise ways to implement the two-minute rule, and how to avoid the context-switching trap once you adopt this newfound productivity guideline.

Two ways to apply the two-minute rule

The two-minute rule is both simple and dynamic. Whether you’re completing a quick one-off task or breaking off a small piece of a larger project, using this guideline can help you push past the paralysis of procrastination and get more done.

Completing quick tasks

As we move through our days, task to task, it’s not always time-consuming to-dos and enormous projects that induce stress.

Instead, it’s the doctor’s appointment we need to book or the email we need to send that linger on our task list for days or weeks. What could be a quick task we complete right way becomes a point of procrastination. A tiny to-do can take on a life of its own in our minds, haunting us as we drink our morning coffee and nagging us as we call it a night.

On the flip side, you’ve probably experienced this feeling too: After those days or weeks of postponing tasks like “dust the banister” or “responding to an email”, you muster the energy to begin and find yourself done just as quickly as you started. Why was there all this buildup and dread for a task that took no time at all?

Unfortunately, the longer you put something off, the harder it feels to accomplish it. To avoid this phenomenon, tackle tasks as soon as they arise or shortly thereafter to avoid them building up in the first place.

You can apply the two-minute rule to any number of the random and unconnected tasks that come up throughout your day –– from taking out the garbage to sorting through mail.

Starting a big task

On the other side of small tasks are the big ones. These are the ambitious and often ambiguous projects that we avoid because we don’t know where to start. It’s the 3000-word history paper that starts as a blank Google doc or the job search we need to begin.

But you can’t scale a mountain in one fell swoop; you have to climb it one step at a time. Luckily,  some of these steps aren’t so hard when we consider each one individually.

That’s where the two-minute rule comes in. You can break down any big task or large project into quick bites that allow you to get started, sustain momentum, and complete an overwhelming task two minutes at a time.

By breaking down bigger projects, we can avoid the initial paralysis we feel before starting, and simply get going on a small part. The next time you feel the pull to procrastinate, identify something you can do in just two minutes to get started.

The advantages of the two-minute rule

From Pomodoro Technique to the Eisenhower Matrix, there are a myriad of ways to get things done. There’s no shortage of methods and mechanisms to do more in less time. But the two-minute rule is an anti-method with many of the perks (and productive returns) of a full-fledged system.

No system, no problem

With the two-minute rule, there’s no complex workflow, 4×4 grid, or inbox to input your tasks. Instead, it’s simple and straightforward: do the quick task quickly. For anyone who is tired of process and procedure, this rule is easy to follow and can be implemented immediately.

It prevents procrastination before it starts

Escape the trap of procrastination by avoiding it in the first place. Instead of adding a task to a list and finding time in the near or distant future to complete it, act in the present.

It creates momentum through tiny wins

Often it’s not just one two-minute task that’s lingering in our heads, it’s half a dozen or more: print tax return, pay the internet bill, send thank you text, wipe the counters, pick an essay title, proofread email. When you employ the two-minute rule to complete just one, it often generates a sense of accomplishment that propels you towards the next task. That could mean rapidly responding to an inbox full of emails or going from chore to chore tidying your home office. Action begets more action and the two-minute rule can be the catalyst we need to check off a chain of small tasks that amount to much more.

It builds a bias towards action

Following the two-minute rule builds a habit of attacking tasks head-on rather than letting them languish on your list. Moving through tasks with speed and efficiency can become embedded in your identity and become a point of pride. Naturally, you’ll still procrastinate from time to time.  However those periods of procrastination will become fewer and farther in between as the satisfaction of action builds.