The OHIO Method

decision making for the professional ditherer

I realized, several years ago, that my tendency to accumulate items that I no longer used could be directly traced to my inability to decide what to do with them. It went something like this:

• hold item in hand and look at it

• purse lips

• shift gaze

• put item down on table and decide to make a decision about it later

Anything that I didn’t have an immediate need for, or a good place to put, would simply be put on hold. A few months later, I would make a decision - once it was buried beneath a heap of similarly unclassifiable items. This shameful process is described in my recent article on Dealing with the Pile; the OHIO Method is the key to not creating the pile in the first place.

Only Handle It Once, which (the internet tells me) does not have a clear source or time of origin, though can be generally traced to productivity schemes of the early 2000’s, appears initially to have applied to workplace tasks: inboxes, email and other such exciting things. In that context, when a something comes your way, you make a decision and act on it immediately. Even if you delegate it to someone else or determine that it isn’t a priority and can be dealt with later, or deem it undeserving of your attention and chuck it out, the task has been processed rather than postponed.

Here is an article detailing OHIO in its business applications. It looks and sounds a bit like it was written by a language algorithm, but covers the details:

I apply OHIO to household management: dishes, cleaning, putting things away, responding to requests from family members, answering the phone - all those things that I would habitually put off, whether for a few minutes or indefinitely, I now act on immediately, whenever possible.

Ironically, I am getting more things accomplished and it is taking less time to do them. Almost like I have a secret housekeeper, but that secret housekeeper is me.

I like the simplicity of the OHIO Method. What it demands is very clear. For example:

• dish in hand from the dinner table, give it a quick rinse and place it immediately in the dishwasher - do not let it “land” in the sink

• a friend calls who I don’t have time/energy to talk to, I answer and say a quick hello, explaining that I don’t have time to talk and can we catch up in a day or two

• object in hand, put it immediately in its home

• doing my daily morning half hour of cleaning, I consider stopping after 24 minutes, but I vacuum the stairs (or clean the toilets or clean the stove or organize the refrigerator baskets, etc.) instead

• my younger son asks me to watch a mildly tedious 5-minute Youtube video that he is excited to show me, and I say yes instead of “maybe later”

It’s a bit like having an internal nudge prompt of “do it” that kicks in whenever I hesitate. I think it is most helpful in the face of the myriad, routine, everyday tasks that just aren’t very exciting, perhaps because they are repetitive. However, by coaxing myself to engage with them, I am also enjoying them more, because I am paying closer attention.

Which allows me time to document important research such as this:

certainly there is a lesson to be learned here...