I probably shouldn’t admit this, but I manage to avoid all manner of relatively unimportant things by just ignoring them the first time around. My theory is that if it does turn out to be that important, it’ll find its way back to me again.
So far, this has had no negative consequences.
A good “training wheels” equivalent is to leave it for a while, then check if it’s still relevant. A good rule of thumb is to wait is double the amount of time you might normally be expected to deal with it within – so maybe a couple of weeks for an email, or a couple of months for a letter.
I’ll often wait, follow up, and get a “never mind, I sorted it” response. Just yesterday, I replied – two months later – to a company that said I owed them £6 for some reason I wasn’t clear on. They replied to say I now didn’t owe them anything and they’d done whatever they needed to do. Go figure.
Does this sound lazy? Selfish? Disorganised? Irresponsible? Maybe.
But it’s part of what I call “strategic laziness”: doing as little as possible of what doesn’t matter, to free up time for what does.