Of everything in Getting Things Done, one rule escaped the book and entered general circulation: if it takes less than two minutes, do it now. It's quoted in kitchens and boardrooms by people who couldn't name David Allen. The rule deserves its fame, and it also gets misused in one specific, expensive way worth naming.
The logic of the threshold
Two minutes isn't magic; it's an estimate of overhead. Tracking a task through any system has a cost: writing it down, seeing it on the list repeatedly, re-loading the context later. For a tiny action, that bookkeeping exceeds the action. Below the threshold, deferring is pure waste; above it, deferring pays because the work deserves scheduling. Allen himself says the exact number matters less than having a consistent line.
Where it shines: inside email processing
The rule was born for the clarify step. You're in a processing window, already in deciding mode, and the email asks something answerable in ninety seconds: answer it, archive, next. This is what keeps quick confirmations and short answers from clogging a task list with entries that cost more to track than to do. Applied this way, the rule is a filter that keeps your next-actions list reserved for real work.
The misuse: as an interruption license
Ripped out of processing sessions and applied to every arriving ping, the rule inverts into an interruption engine: "it's only two minutes" becomes the reason to break focus a dozen times a morning. But the two minutes were never the cost; the refocus is, and UC Irvine's research prices that at roughly 23 minutes per interruption. A two-minute task that interrupts deep work is a 25-minute task wearing a disguise.
The boundary, stated once
Use the rule when you're already in deciding mode: processing email, clearing a note inbox, ending a meeting. Never let it justify entering deciding mode. Batching (the case here) supplies the sessions; the rule makes them fast. And if the tiny-reply category is most of what your two-minute rule handles, that's the category Pidgy drafts automatically, which makes the rule's territory smaller still.
