How long should I take to process stuff?

S

sonturk

0
Is there a rule of thumb for how long we should take to process stuff? Sometime, I think I spend to much time just to figure what that stuff is, if action is needed, what successfull outcome and next action is.
 
About 60 seconds to decide

About 60 seconds to decide your next actions.

If the action will take less than 2 minutes, do it then.

If it's more than 2 minutes, defer or delegate it.

Cheers.
 
Cpu_Modern;75122 said:
>> About 60 seconds to decide your next actions.

If you are way over the 60 seconds mark your NA is 'brainstorm XYZ'.
Click to expand...

I found that if I put "brainstorm X" on the list it never got done. I had to allocate enough time to really truly process my items when I did them. For some of them it takes me 15 plus minutes to even decide on the next actions. Putting it off does not work for me at all. I do better leaving stuff in the inbox if I run out of processing time. I have to be sure that I am fully processing what I do take out. As I am getting more practice I can make the next action decisions faster but it still takes a long time for some things.

I've had things that took a good half an hour to even decide whether it was actionable by me. The whole section on determining the successful outcome part can take a long time too for some inbox things.

I'm finding now that I spend on average an hour or more a day processing the inputs I create and at least once a week I have to take another hour to do the things that got stuck in the inbox because I wasn't sure whether I had to do anything or not.
 
Thank you for tips.

I think that tickler file could also be a good option to incubate stuff on which I cannot define in 60 secondes if action is needed, what successfull outcome and next action is.
 
Remember that it's fine to have _really small_ next actions.

For example, I have a budgeting problem that I don't have the faintest idea how to solve. But I will need to have a particular email to solve it. And I'll need to be able to find that email when I work on the problem.

So my next action is - seriously - "Create a folder for X budget problem on laptop". And the one after that will be "Find Y's email and put in X budget problem folder." I'll probably still be lost, and the next one will be "Re-read Y's email." After a few more ittybitty next actions like this, I will probably eventually hit on something that makes greater than microscopic progress on the problem.
 
This is a heresy, but sometimes when I've got something in my Inbox that I feel like I just don't have a good grip on yet, I'll throw it back in there during the Processing.

I'll just say this as a general rule of thumb: time spent thinking about What Is This? is time well-spent. Don't shortchange yourself here.

Cheers,
Roger
 
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