A few days ago I wrote about the importance of having a good “inbox” in your personal productivity system. Today it felt like I needed a reminder of the 2-minute rule, as advocated by David Allen in his famous GTD methodology.

The 2-minute rule comes into play when you process and organize items from your inbox. Items in the inbox could be anything that has caught your attention, such as to-do’s, ideas, recurring tasks, or requests.

The five key questions to ask yourself when processing and organizing items are:

1. Is the item actionable?

2. Does it take a single step to complete it?

3. Does it take more than two minutes?

4. Is the action for me or someone else?

5. Is there a specific time and/or place for the action?

The diagram below illustrates how these questions are used for an item in the second and third steps (i.e. process and organize) of the five-step GTD workflow.

In my opinion, the most powerful question is the 2-minute one, and I actually prefer to phrase it “Does it take less than two minutes to complete it?”. If the answer is “yes”, then there’s no point in postponing the action and instead you should just do it.

The power of the 2-minute rule is evident, because it really drives you to get things done. The rule also appears simple and straightforward, but turns out to be surprisingly hard to follow rigorously. Why? Well, I can think of at least two reasons.

First, few of us are completely immune against procrastination. There’s always a temptation to put off doing something, especially if it’s something boring or unpleasant – unless you can literally feel the burn of urgency.

Second, when we process and organize actions, most of us have to use System 2 thinking, i.e. the slower, more deliberative, and more logical mode of thought. Ideally, of course, application of the 2-minute rule would fall into the domain of System 1 thinking, i.e. the fast, instinctive and emotional mode of thought.

Therefore, until I’m liberated from the chains of procrastination (don’t see that happening in the near future) or able to instil the 2-minute rule into my System 1 thinking (yeah, good luck with that too), I will need to constantly remind myself of this powerful rule.