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One of David Allen’s key components of the GTD process is his 2 minute Rule, which basically states that if you pick up an item from your inbox, and you can do it’s next action in 2 minutes or under, do it right away.

Do it even if it’s not a real high priority because then it will be done and gone and not cluttering up your head.

This is a great rule, and very important to the success of doing GTD. My problem is that I’ve somehow started to stretch out this rule to 15 minutes. I think, “well, I can’t do it in 2 minutes, but I can do it in 15 minutes, so I might as well do it and get it done with.” The problem arises when I have too many of these “short” tasks, and they eat up my entire morning. Then I didn’t do the really important Next Actions and I feel horribly guilty and unproductive.

To remind me of how long 2 minutes really is, I googled “GTD 2 minutes” and ran across Christopher Schmitt’s blog article Two Minute Playlists for Getting Things Done. He plays songs that are under 2 minutes each while he’s working on his short actions to get rid of the need for a 2 minute timer.

There are quite a few songs that are under 2 minutes. I checked my current ITunes inventory of MP3s, sorted by time, and found the following gems:

• Owen Wilson (from the Starsky and Hutch soundtrack) - Don’t Give Up on Us - 1:09
• Beethoven - Symphony No. 9 (scherzo) - 1:16
• Stone Temple Pilots - No Memory - 1:20
• Green Day - Coming Clean - 1:35
• Simon & Garfunkel - Feelin’ Groovy- 1:50
• Nirvana - Molly’s Lips -1:53
• Red Hot Chili Peppers - Right On Time - 1:55
• Pixies - Tame - 1:56
• Blind Melon - Skinned - 1:58
• Third Eye Blind - Anything - 2:01 (close enough!)

Tomorrow I’m going to make a playlist and get motivated to the music to get through my short actions sooner.

Looking forward to hearing suggestions of more 2 minute or under songs!

Stumble it!

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am and is filed under GTD, Kids, Organization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.