The Only Handle It Once principle, otherwise known as OHIO, is a useful model that will help you improve your productivity. It is opposite of multitasking. The idea behind it is that once you start working on a specific task, you work on it completely from beginning to end. That is, once you touch an activity, you do everything related to it until you finish.

This approach is especially useful for shorter tasks, like a quick email or phone call. Instead of letting it take up space in your inbox or to-do list, you take a few minutes to take care of it. The task doesn’t even ever have to make it to your to-do list. Of course, it is not always possible to do everything at the moment. If you cannot work on the incoming task immediately, set a reminder at that moment to work on it in the future.

The OHIO principle is also helpful for grouping related tasks that you do recurrently, i.e., daily, weekly, or monthly, and completing them in one sitting. You will save time because you will only work on the tasks during one set time instead of piecemeal at different points of the day or week. Once you stop working on the group of activities, you don’t touch them until you are scheduled to work on them again.

How to Work with OHIO

During our day, we waste time as we pick up a task, handle an interruption, pick it up again, multitask on a different task, such as a phone call, and then return to the original activity. Many of us, myself included, at some point, have believed ourselves to be great multitaskers. However, multitasking is not effective.

The problem is that we cannot work on several parallel tasks at the same time, as our brain works sequentially. In other words, if we are dealing with several activities simultaneously, what we are doing is working a little bit on one, then stopping, thinking about the next one, pausing, and engaging with the third. As you can see, this manner of operating is not productive. We waste a great deal of time as we stop and start and stop again.

It is much better to select one task and work on it from beginning to end or an acceptable milestone. As you are working, avoid distractions or interruptions in the middle. Then, once you are done, you can start with the next activity and do the same.

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Short Tasks

As you are going through your day, you are bound to come across all kinds of tasks. Some are short and take just a couple of minutes, while others require more thought and time. When you find something that you need to do or respond to, ask yourself how long it will take you to work on it. If it is only a few minutes, it takes less time to do it immediately rather than put it down, set it up as a task, and pick it up later. The mental space that short email is taking up is not worth it. It is much simpler to respond quickly.

Some tasks will take longer, and you may not have enough time, or it may not be efficient for you to work on that activity immediately. In this case, try to do what you can at that moment, which may include setting up a reminder to work on it at a scheduled time along with all the important details you will need later.

Recurrent Activities

Another way to weave the OHIO principle into your schedule is by appointing times during the week to work on tasks you work on frequently. During these designated times, you work on all related items so that you do not waste time starting and stopping them. This process has the added benefit of knowing that you are doing the work as often as you need to do it and will not miss an important review.

For instance, if you review company reports weekly, and if you’re following the OHIO principle, you can choose to view all the reports during the same time every week. Once you start to work on these reports, do everything related to the review, such as clearing up any questions or fixing any problems you find. To help your review, you can organize all the reports, so you open them all in one sitting and go through each one. You can even set up the list of reports by category, so if you are reviewing sales reports, you are looking at everything related to new leads first, then your existing pipeline, and then closings.

The OHIO principle does not mean that you will always be in a reactive mode, working on anything you receive when you receive it, and not setting your schedule. It is simply an additional tool that you can use to make your day more productive so that you spend less time jumping from one task to another. You do not have to respond to every email as you receive it. If you get emails all day long, you can set up times when you check your inbox in the day, and respond at that designated time, for instance.

Following the OHIO principle will make your schedule more organized. It will help you ensure you are working on everything you need to do from beginning to end and only at set times. The concept will also give you a better idea of how long it takes to complete your daily and weekly tasks. Finally, the most important benefit of all is that you will spend less time and precious productive energy going from one activity to the next before the first one is complete.

What Is the OHIO Method?

The acronym OHIO stands for “Only Handle It Once.”

It’s an organizational strategy designed to not let things pile up. Whenever a new task comes up, you handle it immediately. You don’t keep coming back to it.

The classic example is email.

What most people do is go into their email several times per day, starting with the same couple of unanswered emails. This is a waste of precious mental energy.

What you want to do instead is reply to an email the first time you see it. You get it out of the way, done. You never need to think about this item again.

Other examples:

• Snail mail. When you get a letter, don’t just open it and then put it back down. Either define an action, pay the bill, or shred it.
• Phone calls. When someone calls you and asks you to do something, like call someone else, do so right away.
• Appointments. When you remember that it’s for your check-up at the dentist’s schedule an appointment immediately.
• Decluttering. If keep thinking, “I need to throw this old winter coat out,” get the coat and toss it or bring it to the Goodwill.

There are certain advantages, but also some major pitfalls with “Only Handle It Once.”

Let’s examine those.

Benefits

There are three major benefits to the OHIO method.

We already touched on the first one — mental bandwidth.

If you keep revisiting the same couple of to-dos without acting on them, you are wasting precious focus. You are ruminating and worrying, but not getting anything done.

“Only Handle It Once” solves that. With any given task, you only spend mental energy on it once.

The second benefit is administrative savings. If you handle a task as soon as it pops up, you don’t have to take out your phone or open up your computer and add it to your to-do list.

The third benefit is that you are less likely to forget things. The task has already been checked-off.

Pitfalls

The main problem with OHIO — you end up prioritizing the urgent over the important. You let whatever pops up dictate what you are going to do next.

That is a terrible trade. In a world that is full of distractions, you are giving in to every phone call, every message, and every notification on your phone.

Deep work becomes impossible. You can no longer shut yourself off from the world and focus on your most important project in life.

What’s even more terrible — by following the OHIO principle, you are also conditioning those around you to constantly interrupt you.

If my colleagues know I will stop doing whatever I am doing whenever they show up at my desk, I will become their go-to person. I will be available when others are not. Thus, I have conditioned them to interrupt me at will.

Especially in the context of email, this is not a good idea. It’s the eternal law of email — the sooner you reply to a message, the more messages you will get.

When you reply to emails immediately, you are soon going to drown in them. Instead of taking care of things once, you have created a never-ending flow of follow-up tasks.

You Can’t OHIO

No, not the state! Psychiatrists and productivity experts often recommend OHIO: Only Handle It Once. “This is a rule of thumb for many people with ADHD, but it can also be practiced by anyone who wants to be more organized,” says Winch. “It basically means if you take something on, don’t stop until you’ve finished it.”

The problem with multitasking, though, is that it makes Only Handling It Once a near impossibility—instead, you’re handling it five or six times, says Winch. “If you’re going to stick to this principle, you need to be disciplined and plan out your day so that when a distraction arises or a brilliant idea occurs to you, you know that there will be time for it later.”

The Solution — OHIO 2.0

To make “Only Handle It Once” work for you, you must pay attention to the following tactics. I call this OHIO 2.0.

1. Only Give Yourself 30 Seconds to 3 Minutes

First, only execute OHIO if the task in question will take a very short time, maybe 30 seconds to 3 minutes, depending on your capacities this day.

So, if you catch yourself thinking for the fifth time, “I should really toss these old newspapers,” then just do it. Take them, open the garbage bin, done.

This way, you won’t have to think about the issue for a sixth time. You also won’t have to put this item on your to-do list.

A warning: We all tend to underestimate how long it actually takes to get things done. This is known as the planning fallacy.

Always check yourself. Will it really only take 30 seconds to 3 minutes to answer this phone call by this particular client? Or will you get bugged down for at least half an hour like always?

2. Create Placeholders

Let’s say your car needs a check-up and you want to make an appointment at the garage.

At first glance, this sounds like an OHIO item. But at closer examination, it is not. You want to switch garages, but you first need to call your friend Dave to get a recommendation.

Also, you need to give the new garage your vehicle identification number when you call them, beginners’ winstrol dosage so they can order spare parts. But you can’t remember for the life of it where you placed it.

So, this item is clearly too complex to be taken care of in 30 seconds to 3 minutes.

What you do instead is create placeholders.

Placeholder 1 is, “Call Dave and ask about the garage.”

Placeholder 2 is, “Go looking for my VIN.”

These two placeholder items go on your to-do list.

What this does is it frees up your mental bandwidth, just like the OHIO method would. You know you have taken care of this issue — you have made a decision on what needs to be done and you have put reminders in place at a central location (your to-do list) that you regularly check.

3. Create “Figure It Out” Items

Often, an item will be too complex to only handle it once. But at the same time, you have a hard time defining the exact next step, so you can create a placeholder.

In such instances, create a “figure it out” placeholder.

For example, you know you want to get new leads for your business. But you are not sure how to go about it. Do you put up some Google ads? Should you start doing content marketing? Ask existing clients for recommendations?

So, you create a placeholder that reads, “Figure out how I want to create leads.” Then you put that place on your to-do list, just like any other item. And next time you have an hour or two, you start researching which move makes the most sense to you.

4. Have a Second Brain

Tools like OHIO or the Pomodoro technique must be integrated into a larger productivity framework. Otherwise, these techniques will do more harm than good.

If OHIO is a tool, your framework is the toolbox. It is how you process anything in your life, the methodology you have agreed upon with yourself.

People fixate on the tools but ignore the toolbox because they don’t want to deal with even more complexity.

They are already stressed out, trying to juggle their hectic lives. “Now you want me to learn some complicated time management methodology? No thanks.”

But any quick hack cannot save you. It doesn’t account for the complex, ever-changing reality you are facing. To solve your productivity problems on a fundamental level, you must create a second brain for yourself, something that represents all the projects in your life.

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