The 2-minute rule, popularised by David Allen in his book Getting Things Done, has been the gold-standard advice for dealing with small tasks for years.

Here's how it goes:

If you have a task that takes 2 minutes, don't defer it; do it right away. Piling it up only makes a huge mess later on.

While this seems harmless and helpful in getting your productivity juices flowing, it's not always a good idea.

I took this advice last Wednesday only to discover it wasn't a 2-minute task.

I was editing and polishing last week's blog post when I suddenly realised that I don't know how Ghost's native commenting layout will appear in my custom theme if I turn it on.

Turning on the feature in my local Ghost installation seemed like a 2-minute task. I logged in but couldn't find the feature anywhere. I was running an older Ghost version, and the feature wasn't available.

Updating Ghost would be as simple as running a command, as their docs suggest — another 2-minute task.

I was already detached from writing and was in an experimentation mood, so I tried updating my local Ghost installation.

Due to local configuration mismatches in my laptop, I got stuck in an update loop that I couldn't break out of. I searched for help and tried various solutions but with no luck.

Unable to get anything working, I removed the local installation and started fresh.

But still, the problem persisted.

After spending an hour debugging, I finally found the problem and got an updated Ghost blog running locally with the comments feature turned on.

What seemed like a 2-minute task and a safe detour took more than an hour and disrupted my schedule for the day.

Now, it begs the question:

When is the 2-minute rule the right choice?

Unless you're not doing anything crucial, the answer is rarely.

We grossly underestimate how long it takes for us to do something.

Often, a 2-minute or even a 5-minute task can quickly unravel into something much larger.

Also, while sometimes, 2-minute tasks take 2 minutes, if you account for the time lost in context switching between tasks, it takes way more time.

It's often wiser to accumulate a handful of small tasks and tackle them at the end of the day or when you have half an hour free.

Now, let's move on to the rest of this newsletter issue: