Let’s DANS

Turn on some music and start moving. It’s time to go dancing! Just waltz through your Inbox.

In Dutch, the verb ‘to dance’ is ‘DANSen‘. So I used that as an acronym.

The DANS method is just a simple way to help you decide on what to do with these emails. There are only 4 different things you can choose of, you know:

• D– Delete the emails you no longer need.
• A– Archive the ones you want to keep and label them so you can find them easily.
• N -You only do something Now, when it takes a few minutes or less, like a quick response. We call this the 2-minute rule.
• S – Schedule or snooze the messages that take longer to complete. Don’t dive right in, but decide on when to do them.

How about forwarding and replying? Well, that depends on how long it takes to compose those messages, right?

2-minute Rule or more?

Originally from the GTD method, the 2 minute rule says you should schedule everything that takes longer than 2 minutes.

The idea is that scheduling something will take about 2 minutes. If you can do it in less, you shouldn’t bother with scheduling.

But sometimes, it’s better to be flexible.

Some emails might take a little longer, but completing them right away means you won’t have to look at them again. It’s all about preserving energy: if you only have to handle it once, that would be awesome. There’s an acronym for that too: OHIO – Only Handle It Once.

In general, I would only apply this for easy tasks that take a couple of minutes. If you are under pressure (time-wise) and your Inbox is loaded, you might want to stick to 2-5 minutes. But if you have more time and only a couple of emails in your Inbox, you can be more flexible.