I've been consciously and slowly applying this technique more and more. I've noticed several things in the process.
1. Parkinson's Law is real. Most requests for help are people just creating work for you that they could, with a small amount of effort, solve themselves. By not responding to trivial requests, you encourage people to learn to solve their own problems. The invariably do, and in doing so never need to ask you again.
2. Problems cluster together. It's also frequently more efficient to solve many clustered problems in one go than it is to solve them one at a time as they pop up. Instead of constantly working on my wife's Windows laptop solving the annoyance of the day, I now give it a lashing once a month.
3. Delaying decisions is a good thing. You will have more information the longer you wait. Many times you will make a different, better decision later than you would if you had pulled the trigger early.
1. Parkinson's Law is real. Most requests for help are people just creating work for you that they could, with a small amount of effort, solve themselves. By not responding to trivial requests, you encourage people to learn to solve their own problems. The invariably do, and in doing so never need to ask you again.
2. Problems cluster together. It's also frequently more efficient to solve many clustered problems in one go than it is to solve them one at a time as they pop up. Instead of constantly working on my wife's Windows laptop solving the annoyance of the day, I now give it a lashing once a month.
3. Delaying decisions is a good thing. You will have more information the longer you wait. Many times you will make a different, better decision later than you would if you had pulled the trigger early.