JackLondon
Registered
The canonical recommended time to process a single item is around 30 seconds. Most of my inputs come in the form of long and complicated emails and documents, each containing multiple actions.
For example, I receive an email regarding a treatment programme for a patient. This email must first be forwarded to other stakeholders that should have been cc'ed but weren't (two-minute action). I then need to record that I received this correspondence in a log file for the patient (two-minute action). The email contains a date for an upcoming meeting that needs to go into my calendar (two-minute action) and another promise of a meeting which needs to be tracked on my "waiting for" list, so I add that. The treatment plan suggested in the email must be discussed with another clinician and an outside agency. So, I add a note to my "agenda" for that particular clinician with a link back to the email and add a "next action' to my "calls" list to arrange an appointment with the agency. The email may contain several other similar next actions, all of which must be tracked or put on a list. Finally, I'll archive the email in an appropriate folder. Now I consider the email processed. But, all that has taken me 25 minutes, way longer than the recommended 30 seconds.
The only way I could "process" an email like the above example in 30 seconds would be to add a next action saying process email x and put the email in my "action" folder, but then I'd end up with a list which is almost identical to how my email inbox looked, which doesn't add any value, doesn't move anything forward or relieve any stress as I still essentially have a mountain of unprocessed email.
My question is, am I missing something fundamental about what processing is? I can't imagine I'm alone in receiving complicated, multi-faceted inputs; many people must be in similar situations, needing much longer than 30 seconds to process a single input. How does everyone else process these things?
For example, I receive an email regarding a treatment programme for a patient. This email must first be forwarded to other stakeholders that should have been cc'ed but weren't (two-minute action). I then need to record that I received this correspondence in a log file for the patient (two-minute action). The email contains a date for an upcoming meeting that needs to go into my calendar (two-minute action) and another promise of a meeting which needs to be tracked on my "waiting for" list, so I add that. The treatment plan suggested in the email must be discussed with another clinician and an outside agency. So, I add a note to my "agenda" for that particular clinician with a link back to the email and add a "next action' to my "calls" list to arrange an appointment with the agency. The email may contain several other similar next actions, all of which must be tracked or put on a list. Finally, I'll archive the email in an appropriate folder. Now I consider the email processed. But, all that has taken me 25 minutes, way longer than the recommended 30 seconds.
The only way I could "process" an email like the above example in 30 seconds would be to add a next action saying process email x and put the email in my "action" folder, but then I'd end up with a list which is almost identical to how my email inbox looked, which doesn't add any value, doesn't move anything forward or relieve any stress as I still essentially have a mountain of unprocessed email.
My question is, am I missing something fundamental about what processing is? I can't imagine I'm alone in receiving complicated, multi-faceted inputs; many people must be in similar situations, needing much longer than 30 seconds to process a single input. How does everyone else process these things?