Creating Momentum - The 24-Hour Rule
Though we may like to imagine ourselves as a species of conscientious planners, humans have an optimism bias. We convince ourselves that we’ll remember the gems generated at that last strategy session…but it ain’t gonna happen. You know it; I know it.
After 24 hours (or less!), our short-term memory starts declining. Trust me. Your memory is not as reliable as you think.
The Limits of Short-Term Memory and Willpower
Short-term memory is like having Post-it Notes stored at the front of your brain. Your brain doesn’t have much prime real estate.
In an influential paper titled "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two," psychologist George Miller suggested that people can store between 5 and 9 items in short-term memory. The magic number is 7 (plus or minus 2), Miller concluded, that the average adult can hold in short-term memory because of the number of “slots” available.
So, you only have room for seven Post-it Notes.
Seven items – that is not a lot of space for all the Post-it Notes you need for life! At work, you probably have loads more than seven things to get done in your day at work. More bad news. These Post-it Notes don’t always stick. They can easily fall off our brain-wall. (Technically, this is when a nerve impulse has stopped transmitting through the neural network – you can look that one up.)
Researchers say that the small capacity of our short-term memory was essential for human survival (e.g., keep warm, find our cave, fend off that saber-toothed tiger) without getting bogged down in the details.
Our brains are designed by nature to focus on a few key things at a time. Remembering Tuesday’s update meeting just doesn’t always make that priority list.
Picture this:
You hold an important meeting with your boss, leadership team, or a key client on a Friday afternoon before a long weekend. But after the meeting, it’s the long weekend! (Drinks!) You jump in the car with your friends (or family, or whatever situation you’re in) for three days of fun. Returning to work Tuesday morning, you tell coworkers about your weekend, post pics on Instagram, check the news, roll into a check-in meeting, and grab your third Starbucks. Uh oh – it’s time to get on those notes. Between your sleep-deprived glances (and mild lingering hangover), you can’t quite remember the context or nuances of your chicken scratches or half-typed words in front of you.
There goes your chance to impress your boss or client.
Does this situation sound familiar? If it does, you’re not alone. I have laid out this scenario in presentations many times, including to senior people and successful entrepreneurs who have found themselves in this situation more times than they’d like to admit.
Early in my career, this situation plagued my work weekly, if not daily. I have been embarrassed, lost credibility, wasted some time (OK, a lot of time), and had to repeat meetings (with my proverbial tail between my legs).
I crafted this rule to save my career, and it’s served me to get a grip on my workload and drive killer momentum, while being reasonable at the same time too. . And it’s worked for the many people I’ve trained, coached, and consulted with in all kinds of roles.
The Basics of The 24-Hour Rule
You must rethink, reprocess, or rewrite information within 24 hours of hearing it.
Or in simpler terms: Just do something with the information.
The 3 Whys of The 24-Hour Rule
We have an energetic connection with information – tasks, projects, ideas – that we hear in a 24-hour window. Take advantage of it and remember these 3 “whys” of taking action—any action—in 24 hours.
1. We turbocharge our momentum.
Have you ever had something that sat on your to-do list for weeks that you just couldn’t seem to get to? But then, a new task – ah, adrenaline burst – comes your way and you attack it with record speed?
There will be times when you will have to fight with every inch of your body to move a task forward. So, surf that wave. Ride with the wind at your back. Excuse the metaphors. But the point is to recognize momentum as fleeting and precious. Don’t squander it.
2. It’s a gauge on reality.
Imagine a factory. It has a conveyor belt where widget parts are coming in every day. But the outgoing conveyor belt is broken. More and more widgets pile up daily and there is no way to move them off. Naturally, it jams. Does this remind you of your work?
Consider the basic math of it. If you keep piling on to-dos throughout your day but you aren’t moving enough out in 24 hours, your system isn’t going to work. This breakdown is sending you an important signal. You may need less meetings, more time for focus in your schedule, or better delegation, planning, or workflow.
3. It’s a superpower, even if it’s not perfect.
The 24-hour processor is not a perfect system. You will fall down. You won’t feel like reviewing your meetings or reprocessing what was said yesterday on many (if not most) days.
However, if you use The 24-Hour Rule as your default, you’ll (almost) always take one, incremental step to move work forward. You’ll send one email. You’ll pose one question. You’ll think about what was said. You’ll add the topic to a pending agenda items. That’s the superpower at work—keeping work moving in the right direction.
It will be hard – even impossible – to process everything in 24 hours on many days, too. But it is still better than having no system at all.
The 24-Hour Rule isn’t a modern, techno-savvy, or silver-bullet rule. But it isn’t inefficient, either. What is truly inefficient is bouncing from meeting to meeting, call to call, conference to conference, course to course, seminar to seminar, conversation to conversation without doing anything with the information. Now that is a tragic waste.
Liked this? Click here to get more insights and tips from me. If you’re exploring a documentation challenge, problem-solving issue, or anything else, I’d love to help. Shoot me an email at: adrienne@bellehumeurco.com.
