While you need a system to capture all thoughts as you have them, you will inevitably encounter tasks that you can predict will suffer if you delay them. These could include short tasks that take less time to perform than to persist and recover from notes1 or creative tasks where inspiration has come upon you in the moment. Sometimes, you’ll be in a particular mindset where you are completely engaged in some type of work.2 In such circumstances, consider whether it is more efficient to simply complete a lower priority emergent task than it would be to queue it up for later.
Footnotes
- 1. This is slightly more sophisticated than David Allen’s Two Minute Rule, which states: if it takes less than two minutes to complete, do it immediately rather than taking the time to record it. ↩
- 2. For example, if you need to clean something, you might just get into a cleaning mood, and it might make sense to go clean other things from your to do list rather than the next item from your planning session. ↩