The decision

You've got the argument and the method. What's left is to decide, and you can do it in one sentence.

If it takes under ten minutes, do it when it arrives. Everything else goes on the list, and the list gets fifteen minutes every day at the same time.

Three parts.

The first is the ping. The ten-minute test, run at the moment of arrival, with the item in your hand. Pass, and it's done now, standing up. Fail, and it's on the list with a date. No third exit.

The second is the sweep. Fifteen minutes, the same time, a timer, the list, dated lines, oldest first, stop at the bell.

The third is the clear-out. One hour, once, this weekend, to bring the existing heap down to a handful of dated lines so that the rule starts from clear.

There's a form of planning that helps with rules like this, and it's been tested many times. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran reviewed ninety-four studies of it in 2006. You decide in advance what you'll do and when, in the form "when this happens, I'll do that", and people who plan that way follow through much more often than people who only hold the intention. So write three.

When something arrives, I'll ask "under ten minutes?" and if it is, I'll do it before I put it down.

When the kettle goes on after the children are down, I'll set fifteen minutes and open the list.

When the timer goes, I'll stop and write a dated line for whatever I'm in the middle of.

What to expect. This is my expectation and not a finding. The clear-out will take less than the hour and you'll be surprised by how many items were under two minutes. The first week of the rule will feel officious, doing a form at the counter with your coat on, and you'll do it anyway because it's twenty seconds. The first sweeps will feel like a chore and one of them will be missed, and Lally's finding is that the miss doesn't matter. By the second week, the relief of the closed tab will start landing on time, and you'll notice an evening with nothing on the side and no tabs open, and not quite know what to do with it. By a month, the list will mostly be dated lines waiting on other people, and the carry will have gone quiet, and you'll only notice it went by how loud it turns out to have been.