Consulting Lessons Learned 3: The 2-minute rule
You want to work efficiently as a consultant? Then you should consider applying the 2-minute rule in your daily work routine.
The basic concept is this: Whatever task or problem gets to your attention which can be solved within 2 minutes – you should do it right away. Whether it’s the client email you read that just requires a quick reply or the spelling error you find in a presentation.
Think of the alternative: You spend some time to get to the attention of the open issue or task, then write it down on your todo list so you don’t forget it.
At a later point in time, you will probably have to re-invest some time to understand the whole issue again, before you can solve the problem. This is just very inefficient.
Of course, you will often receive emails which require a bigger time investment and you should not interrupt your work plan in every instance some other task gets to your attention. However, following the 2-minute rule is a good trade-off for what you should do right away and which tasks you should put on your todo list for later.
