Where the two-minute rule stops working
by Andreas Tissen · · updated
You have blocked the morning to write chapter three. At 9:10 a mail asks for an invoice number, and finding it takes a minute, so you do it. At 9:25 you remember the desk lamp you meant to order, which is another minute. Then you notice that the intro of chapter one repeats itself, and you fix that too, because it is quick. By eleven you have done nine small things, each under two minutes, and chapter three has two paragraphs.
Each job took less than two minutes, and together they ate the morning. The rule that let them in is a good rule, used in the wrong place.
Allen wrote it for the clarify step
The rule comes from David Allen's Getting Things Done. When you go through your inbox and decide what each item is, any action that takes less than two minutes should be done on the spot, because writing it down, filing it and coming back to it later would take longer than doing it.
Allen puts it in the clarify step, when you are already working through a pile one item at a time and switching between small things is the job. There the arithmetic holds. During focused work each small job carries an extra cost that the two minutes do not count: the way back into the chapter, which in the example meant rereading the last half page and losing the sentence you had in your head.
James Clear's Atomic Habits (2018) has a different rule with the same name, about starting a new habit with a version that takes less than two minutes. It has nothing to do with this one.
Two settings, two rules
So there are two rules. While you are emptying an inbox, do anything that takes less than two minutes. At any other time, write it down in one line and carry on.
Capture has to be the cheap move. If capture means opening another app, finding the right list and typing there, the small job will feel quicker, and the morning goes the way it went above.
A separate test applies to both settings. Some items take two minutes to carry out but need a decision first, such as "reply to the supplier" when you have not chosen between two offers. Those are decisions, and they belong in the clarify step with time to think, whatever the clock says.
The capture list in Pando
Pando is the outliner I build, a tree of bullets in the browser and on the phone that Claude can also read and write once it is connected. A capture there is pressing Enter and typing one line, and the line lands in the same tree where you will later sort it.
The branch has two halves. Each one holds a rule. In "Inbox" the rule is on: the invoice number was under two minutes and is ticked. In "Focus" it is off, and the five lines are what turned up during the writing block, written down and left alone. After the block those lines go through the inbox like everything else, and only then does each one meet the two-minute test.
The last line, "Friday: count the captures", is the measurement: the number of lines in Focus is the number of interruptions you did not act on that week. The branch is the two-minute rule template with a Thursday filled in. The same split, applied to a whole day, is in time-blocking against a list that lies.
Claude sorts the captures
Once Pando is connected to Claude over MCP, the open standard Claude uses for outside tools, Claude can read the Focus list after the block and write in it. Ask it to sort the five lines: which take under two minutes, which need a decision, which belong to an existing project. It writes its suggestion under each line, and you work through them in one sitting, the way inbox zero describes.
Some captures can go to Claude itself, if it has the tools: a draft of the mail to the editor, or an answer to the travel question from the grant document you gave it, written as a note. Ordering the lamp and answering Dana stay on your list.
The free plan covers 5,000 bullets and Pro is 3 EUR a month. To try a week of capturing during focus blocks and sorting afterwards with Claude, create a free account and connect Claude.