Feb23
Do It, Defer It, Delegate It, or Delete It
Our life is filled with stuff. Lots of stuff. Phone calls, email, voice mail, text messages, customer requests, kids’ demands, whatever. Not to mention the endless stream of ideas that run through our brain. And it’s driving us crazy.
As a result our workspace looks like a disaster area with piles of paper, unopened bills, scribbled sticky notes, and misplaced file folders everywhere. Just stepping into our office produces pangs of guilt or opening our email waves of exhaustion.
Here’s a simple solution: One time each day set aside 15 – 30 minutes to do it, defer it, delegate it, or delete it.
First, do it.
As David Allen recommends in Getting Things Done, if an item takes less than two minutes to do, do it. He even recommends using a timer to make sure you’re not breaking the two minute barrier. In other words, for these simple tasks, don’t let them lag, do them quickly and immediately. You’ll be amazed at how productive this simple habit will make you.
Not everything, though, takes less then two minutes. In that case, defer it. In other words, assign it to a day—as a task—or to a day and a time—as an appointment with yourself or with someone else. If there is no day or time associated with this item, put it in a folder where you can easily access it (Again, Getting Things Done has some great ideas on this.).
Finally, ask regarding this thing you have to do if it can be done by someone else. If so, delegate it. Or ask if it needs to be done at all. If not, delete it. For more thoughts on deleting things, read my blog entitled What’s on Your Stop Doing List?
Getting caught up with your stuff will take more than 15-30 minutes a day. You probably have hundreds (thousands?) of email in your inbox and piles of paper strewn around you office. So what you will need is a dedicated day or two to work through these piles and get them to zero with the do it, defer it, delegate it, or delete it methodology.
Once you have arrived at zero, however, zero is fairly easy to maintain with a bit of daily discipline. The payoff is greater sense of peace, calm, and control. And that’s worth almost any price, am I right?
