The two minute rule.

A very simple and effective way to increase your personal efficiency.
I read quite a lot of books regarding personal efficiency, time management and so on. One of the best tips I've come across is the two minute rule. In the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity (links to Amazon) by David Allen, it is described as something like this : When going through your todo-list either in your head, email or personal organizer of some sort, you simply determine if a given task is likely to take less than 2 minutes to complete. If it does, do it right away.

Why? All the tasks that we have on our todo-lists take up both space and energy in our subconsciousness. Every now and the our subconscious mind reminds us about these tasks, big or small. When we work on other things that require concentration, these reminders are unnecessary and disturbing interruptions. The total time that we spend or loose on reminders about one small task, can easily exceed the time it would take to complete the task.

And that is why completing the task right away, and getting it out of the subconscious reminding-bin saves so much time.

Don't spend time being reminded and loosing concentration. Instead, complete two-minute-tasks as soon as they appear.