Most people keep one place for everything that reaches them, so anything they cannot close right now gets read again and again. According to the source, three baskets, together with routing and policing, can cut your traffic worries by three quarters. The basket most people lack is the middle one.
Three baskets and what separates them
The source describes a whole system in three short lines: a stack of three baskets, one above the other. In the top basket, in, sits what has not been looked at yet. In the middle basket, pending, sits what you have seen and cannot deal with right away. In the bottom basket, out, sits what has been dealt with and is ready to go back into the lines or into the files.
Exactly three, not two and not five, and what matters is the criterion that separates them. In is what you have not seen. Pending is what you have seen and cannot act on yet, for example because you are waiting for a supplier's answer, you lack information, or the matter depends on a date. Out is what is done and ready to leave.
The middle basket is the critical one, and most people do not have it. Without it, whatever you cannot close right now goes back to the pile of what came in, and gets read again each time you pass it.
Suppose an owner has one inbox for everything. Every morning he goes through sixty items, and fifty of them hold nothing he can do anything about. When he adds a pending label, his morning covers twelve items and the rest wait in the right place. An installer with three hooks in his workshop, for jobs that came in, jobs waiting on a part and jobs ready for delivery, uses the same principle with no screen at all.
Pending is not later
Here the baskets connect to the booklet's argument about putting things off. Pending means you have already decided and cannot act yet. Later means you have not decided.
The difference looks small, and its effect is large. A pending item sits in its place until whatever it waits for arrives. An item put off until later comes back to you each time you pass the pile, and each time you read it afresh and agonize over it afresh.
That makes a pending basket full of undecided items just another pile of later, with a more respectable name.
Three quarters
The source gives a number here, and it deserves to be taken seriously. If all you knew were the baskets, the ways traffic gets in and out, and what should reach you from which posts, and you policed it, you could cut your traffic worries by three quarters.
That is a large number from three things only: baskets, routing and policing. It takes no methodology and no app.
The word that matters is policing. The baskets alone do nothing. The difference appears when someone checks regularly what goes where. Suppose an owner who sets up a tidy system and never looks at it again. A month later it matches the old mess, with labels on it. When he starts checking pending at a fixed time each week, he discovers that three items a week were dying there without his knowing.
The source also knows that all of this sounds too simple. It anticipates the reaction of an executive who feels he is being asked about little pieces of paper, and answers in advance. Being simple says nothing about whether a thing matters, and the thought that it is silly is what keeps most people from doing it.
What counts as finished
The booklet closes with a definition of finished. According to the source: “Something is fully operational when it functions without further care or attention.” In practice, finished is something you will not need to touch again, however much you have already worked on it.
From that comes the order of priority the source prefers. Time scattered thinly over a wide area produces no result, and the source calls that puttering around. The way to get somewhere is to give priority to definite whole actions, in order of the value of their results, and to finish one area before the next.
Suppose an owner who advances four areas of the business at once for half a year. None of them reaches the point where it can be left alone. When he closes one all the way, it stops consuming his time, which makes room for the one after it.
Or an owner who ranks four areas of her practice by the value of the result and ignores what feels urgent. The area that comes out first is the one nobody ever pressured her about.
What the booklet has on this
The chapter this article draws on includes the questions the source asks about your desk, the order of action for tomorrow morning, and two exercises: the three baskets, and four areas. After it come the practice section and the summary of the booklet.
If you read the same things again every morning, first check whether you have a place for what you have already decided on and cannot act on yet.