Do it today

The next three chapters are the method. This one is the rule for the moment of arrival, and it's the one that stops the heap forming in the first place.

The ping is the moment. The envelope on the mat, the email, the form in the bag, the text about the date. When it arrives, you're already holding it and already thinking about it, and that's the cheapest moment the item will ever have. The rule attaches to that moment and not to a later one.

The ten-minute test. Ask one question. Would this take under ten minutes? Be honest, and remember chapter 4, which says your guess for short items runs high. Most pings pass. The reply, the signature, the renewal click, the two-minute call, the receipt photograph. If it passes, you do it now.

Now means now. Not later today. Not after dinner. Now, standing up, with the envelope in your hand. Later today is where the heap is made, because later today becomes tomorrow at the first interruption, and there's always one. The form gets signed at the kitchen counter with the bag still open. The reply gets sent from the pavement. The renewal gets done at the desk before the email is closed.

If it fails the test, it goes on the list. Not on the side. On the list, in chapter 21, with a dated line. The item leaves the moment of arrival either done or written down, and those are the only two exits. There is no third exit called "I'll remember".

Open it at the door. Post is opened where it lands, on the way in, and the ten-minute test runs on the contents. Chapter 16 is about why the shut envelope is heavier than the open one. Most of it is recycling, and the rest is a two-minute thing you do with your coat on.

What now looks like at a school gate. The form comes out of the bag at pick-up. You sign it against the wall and put it back in the bag, and it goes in tomorrow. Twenty seconds, and it never enters the heap. That's the rule at its most ordinary, and it's the whole book.

Expect it to feel wrong for a week. Doing a dull thing at the moment it arrives, when you could put it down, feels like an imposition. It is one. It's four minutes now against three weeks of carry, and chapter 5 did the arithmetic. By the second week, the relief of the closed tab starts arriving on time, and the rule stops feeling like a rule.