Before you start

This is a short book and you can read it in two or three sittings. It's about one habit, and the habit is made of very small things. A form that needs a signature. A renewal that needs a click. A message that needs a reply. An appointment that needs booking. A receipt that needs uploading. None of them takes more than a few minutes and none of them gets done, and by Friday there are eleven of them, and each one has quietly become a thing you dread, and the dread is bigger than all eleven put together.

I'm going to argue three things. The first is that the habit makes sense from the inside. Each item is small, so it can wait, and it's dull, so it should wait, and there'll be a proper chunk of time at the weekend. The second is that the waiting is where the cost is, and there's research on why. Undone tasks stay active in the mind and get in the way of everything else until a specific plan is made for them. The dullness that makes an item easy to put off is the strongest predictor of its being put off, and the putting off is a way of feeling better now that the you of next week pays for. People overestimate how long very short tasks take and remember them as longer than they were. And the dread you feel about the form isn't the form. It's what three weeks of not doing the form has added to it. The third is practical. If it takes under ten minutes, do it when it arrives. Everything else goes on a list, and the list gets fifteen minutes every day at the same time. That's all of it, and chapters 20 to 23 cover how.

This book doesn't call you lazy or disorganised, and it doesn't think admin is a test of character. Chapters 15 and 17 are about why those ideas make the heap worse.

Three cautions.

If you've always found it hard to organise time and finish tasks, if you lose things and are easily distracted, and this has been true since childhood and affects your work or your relationships, the NHS says to see a GP, because it may be attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and that has its own help.

If the heap is unopened post about money you can't pay, that isn't this book. An earlier book in this series is about opening the envelope, and StepChange, Citizens Advice and National Debtline give free advice.

And if the heap has grown because you've felt low most of the day, most days, for a fortnight or more, the NHS says to see a GP, and the heap can wait until you have.

The notes at the back give my sources and their limits. Where I'm giving my own reasoning and not a finding, I'll say so.