Do it, defer it, and delegate it; the two minute rule; and organizing your practice
In our GTD for lawyers series so far we’ve discussed the basics of GTD, and introduced important concepts. We looked at writing your to-dos as “Next Action” items, and aggressively capturing all “open loops” (incomplete items). Now it’s time to start looking at organizing and prioritizing.
When you capture items needing attention, via your initial Mind-Sweep or daily activity, you’ll need to put them into an inbox for processing, whether physical or virtual. You’ll also have an email inbox to look through as well. It’s at this point you need to decide whether to Do it, Defer it, or Delegate it.
Do it: the two minute rule
You look at an item in your inbox. Can you take care of it in two minutes?
The two minute rule dictates that as you’re working through your action items, you should simply perform a task if it takes you two minutes or less. Even if something is not the highest priority, it often makes sense to follow this rule of thumb. Once an item is small enough to complete, you don’t want to add overhead of filing it or organizing it. Either get it done or delete it if it’s not worth doing.
Obviously, two minutes is a general guideline: depending on the time you have to devote to your inbox and the number of items it contains, you can increase or reduce the time limit.
Delegate it
Hmm… You’re looking at an item from an inbox, and it’s going to take longer than two minutes. Are you really the right person for the job? If you’re not, you may need to delegate the activity.
The important thing to realize is that you don’t just delegate to your subordinates, you may need to ask a senior partner something, another associate, a judge, opposing counsel, a spouse, etc. Also critical: it’s important to make sure you track anything you’ve handed off in a “Waiting For” list, described in the section below.
Defer it: Organizing Items
Most things you encounter will probably need to be done by you and take longer than two minutes. Now it’s up to you to organize them for later access.
The GTD chapter on organizing is subtitled “setting up the right buckets” (“Getting Things Done”, Chapter 7). One of the critical ideas is strictly segregating your items into different categories, because if you don’t, your organizational system will tend to break down. If you put far-off goals in the same list as immediate Next Actions, for example, and those items never get checked off, lists tend to get ignored.
GTD suggests that your things will fit into one of seven categories. Everything can be tracked in either a list or a folder, virtual or physical:
- Calendar actions: In order for a task to make it onto a calendar, it should be only time- or day- specific.At all costs, one should avoid wishful-thinking calendaring. Don’t put “Arrange dentist appointment” on Monday if it’s not really tied to a date. That belongs on a Next Actions list.
- Next Actions lists: For things that must get done soon but not on specific dates, they go on a traditional to-do list. If you have 50 or more things to do, Allen recommends lists arranged by context, not by category. For instance, Next Action lists are best organized by “Calls”, ”At Computer”, ”Errands”, ”At Home”, and so on. The rationale is that when you’re flowing in one of these modes, you can crank through your lists quickly. Switching mode can take more energy than people realize.
- Waiting For list: It’s important to follow Next Actions you’ve delegated into a list. Not only do you need to track the deliverables of others, but oftentimes tasks in projects can bounce between people. The more closely they are tracked, the sooner turnaround can happen.
- Projects list: Project lists hold no specific Next Action reminders, but rather serve as a list of all of the projects you’re working on. This is not a list that’s traditionally scanned on a daily basis like Next Action lists, but rather is reviewed weekly to make sure you’re not losing track of priorities or actions.
- Project Support and Reference Material: Items that are non-actionable, but support ideas, interests, or projects get filed away into folders for later reference. You can use computer or manilla folders, as long as you have a system in place. Reference material is not for reminding. The real importance of having locations for reference is remove it from your actionable items. Once you clutter up your priorities with massive data, your system can unravel.
- Someday/Maybe list: Anything that’s not a priority and can go on the back burner ends up on the “Someday/Maybe” list. It’s a good way to capture life goals and creative pursuits. Things like “Hike Machu Pichu” or “Start web based legal software company” might end up there. Eventually, based on priorities, items on the “Someday/Maybe” list may get promoted to the projects list.
You can purchase David Allen’s Getting Things Done at Amazon.
(photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lustymonk/2957726972/)
Larry Port is the Founding Partner of Rocket Matter, the leading web-based legal practice management product. A speaker and award-winning writer at the crossroads of the legal profession and cutting edge technology, Larry writes extensively for legal publications including Law Technology News, Law Practice Today, ILTA's Peer to Peer, FindLaw, Chicago Lawyer, and others.
Lawyerist is the #1 law practice blog. We write about marketing, practice management, career development, and more.
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Thanks for the great guest posts! I find Lawyerist to be a great resource anyway, but the guest posts add another layer of law practice pointer goodness to the mix.
Thanks
Good post. There is one technology that can greatly help the practice of GTD — voice recognition. The key to eliminating stress is to stop carrying the to-do items in your head. If you can send an email or document a Task by voice, you can actually enjoy practicing one of the key GTD tenets — “do it” or “defer it”.
I find parts of the GTD system extremely useful, particularly the 2-minute rule. This is very handy when processing email, which is how most of my tasks come to me. In a litigation practice, I am unsure if the project should be “Smith vs. Jones” or if it should be “Set up Smith depos” or “Send discovery to Jones.” Either way, I always end up with a task/next action list that is simply too long to manage, and that is where the system breaks down, no matter what method I use.
I’m not exactly clear on how “projects” should be organized, either. Instead, I use my GTD-inspired weekly work planning template, which accomplishes the same thing in a more lawyer-sensible way.
I like your template. I can’t plan a whole week at a time since I’m on the downhill side of deciding what has to happen on any given day. I have started using giant note cards to pull out the immediate things that need to happen so I don’t forget something like finalizing a letter during the day’s whirlwind. It seems like TeuxDeux will do something similar to that, too, so I’m looking at that. Thanks for showing us that one.