The Two-Minute Rule Changed My Mornings

For about three years my mornings started the same way. Alarm, snooze, alarm, snooze, then a panic sprint where I'd find out, in this order, that there were no clean mugs, my keys weren't on the hook, and the trash I'd meant to take out the night before was still sitting by the door looking at me.

I'm not a messy person, exactly. I'm a "I'll do it later" person. And later, it turns out, is always 7:40 a.m. on a Tuesday.

Last spring a coworker, Priya, watched me dig through my bag for a whole minute looking for a pen that was behind my ear. She said, "Have you ever tried the two-minute rule?" I said no, in the tone you use when you're about to ignore somebody's advice. Then I went home and tried it anyway, mostly so I could tell her it didn't work.

It worked. Not perfectly. But enough that I'm writing about it.

So what is it

It's almost embarrassingly simple. If something will take less than two minutes, you do it right now instead of putting it off. That's the whole thing.

It comes from David Allen, the guy who wrote the productivity book Getting Things Done back in 2001. In his system it's a way to stop small tasks from piling up into one big scary list. I've never read the book. I'm told it's good. I just stole the one rule and ran with it.

Week one: the mug situation

I decided I'd only use the rule in the evenings, because the mornings were where things went wrong and I figured the problem started the night before.

Night one, I finished my tea and, instead of leaving the mug in the sink "to soak," I washed it. Forty seconds, maybe. I felt stupid about how proud I was.

Night two, I washed the mug and hung my keys on the hook instead of throwing them on the couch.

By Friday I was doing five or six little things every night without thinking too hard. Mug. Keys. Trash out if it was more than half full. Shoes by the door. Phone on the charger in the kitchen, not next to my bed.

Saturday morning I came downstairs, there was a clean mug, my keys were where they should be, and I just stood there in the kitchen for a second. It felt like somebody else had cleaned up for me. Somebody nice.

Week two: I got greedy

This is where I messed it up a bit. Once I saw it working, I started trying to two-minute everything. Reply to that email? Two minutes. Book the dentist? Two minutes. Fix the wobbly shelf? I told myself two minutes.

It was not two minutes. It was forty-five minutes and a trip to the hardware store, and I went to bed late, and Thursday morning was a disaster all over again.

So I made myself a second rule. If I'm not sure it's under two minutes, it isn't. It goes on a list for the weekend. That fixed it.

What counts as two minutes, for me anyway

I timed some of these on my phone because I didn't trust myself. Here's what actually makes the cut:

• Washing one mug, one plate, one fork. Not "the dishes." Those three things.
• Putting keys, wallet and badge in the same bowl by the door
• Taking out a half-full trash bag before it becomes a full one
• Laying out tomorrow's clothes, as long as I don't start second-guessing the shirt
• Filling the water bottle and putting it in the fridge
• Writing one line on a sticky note about the first thing I need to do at work

Things that do not make the cut, no matter how much I lie to myself: folding laundry, "quickly" answering a text from my mom, anything involving a screwdriver.

Where it fell apart

I'll be honest, there were bad nights. Nights I got home at nine and the last thing I wanted was to think about mugs. On those nights I skipped it, and the next morning was worse, and I'd remember why I was doing it in the first place.

The other problem is that it doesn't fix the snooze button. Nothing fixes the snooze button. I'm still working on that one.

What my mornings look like now

It's been about four months. I get up at the same time I always did. The difference is that the first twenty minutes aren't spent fixing last night's mistakes. I make coffee in a clean mug, I grab my stuff from the bowl, I read the sticky note, and I'm out the door. Some days I even have time to sit down with the coffee, which honestly felt like a myth before.

Priya asked me last week if I'd tried it. I said yes and that it had changed my mornings, and she said, "I know, you haven't been late in like three months," which, rude, but fair.

If you try it, start small. One mug. One night. It feels silly, and it is a bit silly, and it works anyway. I've been finding a lot of little ideas like this in the Lifehack section lately, real people writing about what actually worked for them. And if you'd rather read something that has nothing to do with being productive, there are short stories and poems all over VocalsMedia too.