The Five-Minute Fix

The smallest issues at work rarely feel urgent in the moment. A misfiled document, a slightly off number in an invoice, an email you meant to answer but didn’t—each one gets a quick mental note: I’ll deal with it later.

The problem is that small things have a way of becoming bigger things when they’re left alone. For example, a simple data entry error in an invoice might seem harmless at first, but if it gets carried forward into a payment run or reconciled incorrectly in the accounting system, it can turn into a much larger issue that takes hours and costs money to trace back and correct. What might take five minutes to fix today can easily turn into something that takes hours and costs money a week from now—especially once other people, systems, or records become involved.

I’ve found that if something can be handled in just a few minutes, it’s usually worth taking care of while it’s in front of you. Not everything needs to become another item on the to-do list.

Sometimes, the easiest way to stay ahead is to deal with small issues the moment you see them. Because in the end, small problems don’t stay small—they just wait until they’re harder, slower, and more expensive to fix.