I\u2019ve spent time cringing at promoting this to most people!\u00a0 If we take the idea literally \u2013 when you grab the mail, you will spend time attending to each bill and making separate trips to the filing cabinet or shredder each day as you deal with each piece of mail.\u00a0 Doing a web search on those terms several hits talk about the myth of Only Handle It Once (O.H.I.O) while others talk about how helpful and important it is. Yet all of these articles, whether \u201cdebunking a myth\u201d or using the system, really boil down to the same thing \u2013 it\u2019s really about your level of efficiency.<\/p>\n
It requires that you don\u2019t try to apply this literally to every situation.\u00a0 There are times to handle something only one \u2013 junk mail and spam e-mails are good examples.\u00a0 Is there really any reason to have this cluttering up your space and not getting it into the trash (physical or electronic) quickly?\u00a0 It does also rely on your definition of junk and spam \u2013 for example, if you are in the market for a new credit card, those offers might be worth examining.<\/p>\n
On the other end of the spectrum, there are plenty of things you aren\u2019t going to handle only once, at least in the literal sense.\u00a0 If we think about \u201chandle\u201d more loosely, as in moving the item to a temporary \u201chome\u201d until it is time to attend to it, you can eliminate any worries it could cause by knowing you will complete later.\u00a0 You are handling it once \u2013 in that you are moving it along in your system.<\/p>\n
Therefore the key piece here is to have some systems that work for you, where you\u2019ll put the things in the meantime.\u00a0 It needs to be the same place each time and not cluttered with unrelated items.\u00a0 This means that you can create different areas for phone calls, bills, scheduling (parties, social events, etc.) and focus on each one independently of the others, or if it works for you, keeping this all together.\u00a0 Regardless of how you choose to set it up, you need to use it and make time to deal with those items.<\/p>\n
If you are able to make a specific home for things and when the time is right, focus on them, you are still handling it only once since your brain is not continuing to \u201chandle\u201d it between when you got it and the time when you need to deal with it.\u00a0 Sometimes this is where things break down for people; they don\u2019t have working systems.\u00a0 This is a different issue, as it isn\u2019t handled only once.<\/p>\n
This applies to e-mails as well, if you deal with it promptly, you will not keep re-reading them over and save yourself time.\u00a0 In truth, it applies to many things.\u00a0 If your dishwasher is not actually getting your dishes clean the first time through, you have to handle them repeatedly \u2013 hence why some people will almost wash the dishes before putting them in.\u00a0 If we can streamline the laundry and get it put away, we\u2019re not handling our clothes over and over again.<\/p>\n
The truth is that even I still struggle some with thinking about this phrase as not literal \u2013 when I hear it, when I talk about it \u2013 I still cringe inside.\u00a0 I\u2019m afraid people cannot take it more figuratively \u2013 and from much of what I\u2019ve seen and heard, when people talk about it, they use it literally.\u00a0 Yet, if we can shift our thinking about the term handling to being about moving things along in the process, we\u2019ll become more efficient.\u00a0 As well as we\u2019re simplifying things in our lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The largely touted organizing and time management principle of \u201cOnly Handle It Once\u201d (O.H.I.O) is easily taken too literally and misses the point that taking \u201chandle\u201d more figuratively does increase our efficiency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[10,8,18,5,20,22],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-timemanagement","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-goals","tag-household","tag-paperwork","tag-productivity"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-3c","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198\/revisions\/199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}