A recurring theme of conversation at events, gatherings and online chatter seems to be an overload of email and other things vying for our attention. On a few occasions I’ve heard people express their thirst for a simple, clean way of managing the deluge. So here’s my offering. Handle It Once.

This chart breaks it into the simplest of terms. You can use this concept for managing email, processing friend requests, or juggling chainsaws (if you’re into that kind of thing).

The idea is that you take each incoming item all the way through the process. Don’t leave anything floating. This takes faith in the belief that “the cream always rises to the top” — which is to say:

“If it’s more important than you thought, it will come back to your attention.”

Illustration by Dan Rubin.

You might think that you could simply prioritize everything for later and gain nothing by using this concept — or even that you’re not truly “handling it once.” But you would be cheating yourself and going against the whole goal of getting things done. You don’t want to cheat yourself — do you?

As the diagram shows, act completely on one item at a time. All the way from the inbox to one of three resolutions:

  1. Do it now
  2. Delegate or prioritize
  3. Delete it — Strongbad style if you like

The sticking point can be prioritizing. A nifty trick is to set a 3 day alert on everything you prioritize. This way, if you are waiting on someone else to complete a task you can send a follow-up email if appropriate, and get an automatic reminder after 3 days. By that time the other person may have responded and it’s your turn to act, or perhaps they need another follow-up. You can gauge the urgency at that point in time.

You could also set multiple alerts, but that adds complexity and can be a weak point in the system. Weak points always fail, it’s just a matter of time.

Using this system has not just saved me time, but much of the stress of trying to keep up with it all. It requires a little faith in yourself and in the system, but who couldn’t use a little more faith?