Information Dead Pool

Ideas, tasks, meetings, thoughts, concerns, suggestions, and massive amounts of information waterfall across your desk (and your brain) every day. It’s ceaseless and non-stop.

For many, this information cascades into a dead pool of stagnating water that takes the form of an email inbox or a desktop (could by virtual, or could be physical). That pool is where great ideas go to die.

There is a solution. Follow these two rules.

1. Capture everything possible.

Inboxes are great, as long as you don’t have too many. I have a single email inbox, a physical inbox, and I use a utility on my phone (that syncs to all my devices) called “Drafts”. This captures most things cascading over the waterfall.

2. Make a decision about everything.

Whatever comes across your desk (or your brain) you ask a simple question. “What do I do with this?”

You can ultimately do one of three things.

• Nothing.
  If you can’t do anything — file it away or throw it away. I throw a lot of things away. I don’t have a great filing system.

• Do it now.
  I like the 2-minute rule. If you can finish in 2minutes or less, do it.

• Do it later.
  Put it on the calendar or put it on a list.

• Delegate it to someone else.

To be clear:
None of this is original with me. I'm not making this up. It’s productivity 101.

But, to be clearer:

If you don’t put these two rules into practice, you will find yourself under the waterfall cascading into information dead pool.

You will not be able to stand.