One of the most often-cited productivity tenets is the principle of “touching things only once.”
I first learned this rule from reading David Allen’s seminal book, Getting Things Done. He advises that we should touch every email, every piece of paper, every incoming item, only one time.
Review it, decide whether you need it, and then delete it, file it, or delegate it.
It’s a nice theory, and it may work for some pieces of information, but it can do more harm than good.
First, sometimes you don’t yet know whether something is or will be relevant. You may not have the full context of information to make that decision.
More important: the idea that you can go through life dealing with things only one time is contrary to the fundamental truth regarding the patterns of life.
Life unfolds in season and cycles that naturally repeat.
Progress isn’t linear; it’s a spiral. In the journey toward any goal, we will have periods of major progress and periods of set backs. We walk a path, back track our steps, review what we’ve done, and then go forward again.
In this way, we are like the planets, which appear to move forward and then in retrograde motion for periods of time.
When planets are retrograde, they remind us to revisit old issues that we might have thought to have been resolved.
The Value of Revisiting Things
It’s never fun dealing with the same issues repeatedly. It’s natural that we prefer to break new ground and explore new territory.
But part of making progress is retreading old ground: reviewing where we’ve been, what we’ve communicated, how we have communicated it, and how to create better systems.
Sometimes we need to look at an email or other piece of communication multiple times before we get clarity on how to move forward with it.
Things that matter often require repetition to discover the meaning and receive the insights it can offer.
Repetition may seem unproductive, but it can set us up to have revelations and insights that we wouldn’t get from reviewing something only once.
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