One Minute, Two Minutes – What's the Difference? Some readers may find the Ticklist approach rather odd.
We already have a one-minute rule (anything which would take less than a minute gets done straight away rather than being written on the Ticklist). Now we have a two-minute rule at the end of the day – you might sensibly wonder whether we shouldn't just make the one-minute rule into a two minute rule and get things done more quickly.
The answer to that is 'No'. These rules are very different. During the course of the day – when the one minute rule applies - you have other, important commitments, and you are unlikely to be in the right location to do things quickly. You will do your Ticks-and-Twos in a place you have chosen in advance, with all the necessary facilities available.
An example may make this clearer: imagine that you find a note in your pigeonhole at 08:00, asking you to phone a parent to answer a very quick question – not urgent. This may look like a one-minute task, but only if you have a phone near your pigeonhole. A walk to the office, a little wait for a colleague to free up the phone, a quick conversation and back to your teaching room - could easily take up fifteen minutes of your life. At the end of the day, when Ticks-and-Twos are scheduled, you will be in a location (probably an office) and in a mood, where you can do tasks like this quickly and much more efficiently.