Clear the heap once

The rule stops the heap growing and the sweep works it down. But you've got a heap now, and this chapter is the one hour that deals with it, once.

One hour, this weekend. Not fifteen minutes. An hour, with a coffee, and the timer set for sixty. This is the only time this book asks for a chunk, and it's because the heap was built without the rule and needs clearing before the rule can take over.

List everything. All of it. The tabs, the envelopes, the things in bags, the replies owed, the things you've promised, the items you can only half remember. Write them all on one page. Most people find it fits on one side and has fewer items than they feared, because the carry from chapter 3 has been making eleven feel like forty.

Run the ten-minute test on each. Mark the ones that would take under ten minutes. In my observation that's most of them. Then do those, now, in the hour, one after another, crossing each out. Don't stop to feel anything about how long they've been there. Chapter 17 said why. "Three weeks, done now." Next.

Dated lines for the rest. What's left is the items that need something, a document, a call in office hours, a longer sitting. Each gets a dated line, and the dated line goes on the list that the sweep will work. Nothing stays on the page without a date.

Close the tabs. All eleven. The ones that were done are done. The ones that weren't are on the list with a date, and the tab was never the reminder. It was the carry made visible. Closing them is the physical form of the carry standing down.

Notice the size. At the end of the hour, look at the list. What was the heap is now a handful of dated lines, and the handful is what it always was. The rest was dread, added by delay, and it's gone, and it went in an hour. That's the actual size of the heap, and it's worth seeing once, because it's what you'll remember the next time the felt size starts to grow.

Then the rule takes over. From Monday, the ten-minute test at every ping, and the sweep at the same time. The heap doesn't come back, because nothing's allowed to leave the moment of arrival without being done or dated, and the clear-out is the last chunk you'll need.