The Five-Minute Task That Isn’t Really Five Minutes

Small tasks hide waiting, interruptions and repeated effort.

It is easy for this sort of thing to become normal. People work around it, new starters copy the workaround and before long nobody really questions why the process works that way.

Look at what is actually happening

Follow one supposedly quick task from trigger to completion. Count the systems, handoffs, chasing and recovery time after interruptions.

The useful question is not whether somebody can work harder or remember more. It is whether the process is making the work unnecessarily difficult.

Design the better version

Measure elapsed time as well as touch time. Then challenge why each step exists instead of merely trying to make the five minutes faster.

That is the point of RE:PROCESS: make the work visible, challenge the bits that no longer make sense and build a simpler way of getting the outcome you actually need.