Do it now

Many moons ago, I had a high-demand, high-stress job where I was required to work on multiple projects for different customers, each with its own project manager and team members. As projects came and went, we would often find ourselves kicking off a new project in the morning while bracing ourselves for a last-minute migration for another customer that night.

Priorities overlapped, timelines were hard to keep track of, and demands came from all sides at all times. Not fun, and it took a toll on my health. Long story short, I ended up in the hospital with my blood pressure at crazy high numbers and was told to stay home for a few days.

That is the scenario I found myself in when I heard about the book Getting Things Done. I will not spoil it here or go into everything, but the main idea from the author is that our minds are not set up to hold open loops in memory. It is a sure way to get extremely stressed, become unproductive, and paradoxically, not get those things done. The author goes through several ideas, such as capturing all the open loops in a trusted system, and one of them was the game-changer for me.

“If any action takes less than two minutes, do it immediately.”

This instantly clicked for me. The overhead cost of capturing, classifying, and scheduling a task that takes less than two minutes is probably more than two minutes. But that is not all. The real payoff is not only the two minutes you save. It is the chain reaction. A small task completed quickly gives you a little push toward the next one. “Do it now” is not just discipline. It is a feedback loop.

What happened to me was that it created forward momentum in my day-to-day work, which helped me implement the other recommendations from the book. Then I got into this virtuous cycle, where each new technique or discipline I implemented freed up more mental space and time in my calendar, reducing my stress and allowing me to be more productive.

While most people in my group had about 4 projects running in parallel, I found myself handling 7 at one point without burning out.

Maybe I should confess that I bent the two-minute rule a little. I usually go as far as five minutes, or stretch it to ten when I can see the payoff will be worth it.

Now, let me be very prescriptive about something here: when I say “if it takes less than two minutes, do it now,” I really mean it. If I am in the middle of a meeting and something gets assigned to me that I can get done on the spot, I just do it. I have been in 1:1 meetings where something came up, and I said: “Hold on a minute… done.”

I cannot prove it, but I am under the impression that some people avoid getting tasks done right away because they do not want to give the impression that they have no work to do and are available on the spot. I have also heard people say that if they do anything right away, people will expect them to do everything right away.

I do not agree with either.

I do not think any boss or colleague of mine ever assumed I had just been twiddling my thumbs and watching cat videos, waiting for work, just because I answered their question or got something done in a couple of minutes. As a manager, I also never assumed an employee or colleague was playing video games or staring at the ceiling until I asked them for something, just because they got it done quickly.

And there is another side effect of following this two-minute rule: many things that can be done in less than two minutes will likely unblock others, allowing them to work on their own tasks. This is powerful because it paints you as a team player who helps your colleagues, bosses, and company achieve their goals. You become a reference, the person others think of when something interesting comes up: The person that get things gone.

As I said, Getting Things Done was a game-changer in my career, and I would recommend reading it multiple times. But if you want something that will give you immediate returns, start with the two-minute rule.

The important thing is not the exact number of minutes. Two, five, ten… that is not the point. The point is to stop turning tiny actions into administrative debt. Every time you postpone something simple, you create another open loop your brain has to carry, another small promise you have to remember, another loose end waiting to steal attention later. Do enough of that, and your day becomes heavier than it needs to be.

So start small. The next time something lands in front of you, and you know it can be handled quickly, resist the temptation to “organize” it. Just do it. Answer the message. Send the file. Book the meeting. Approve the request. Close the loop.

You may be surprised by how much lighter your day feels when fewer tiny things are following you around.