I first come across this concept from David Allen of Getting Things Done fame. It is on dealing with emails and why having only one touch is so important. I didn’t understand it then, but I just understood it when I came out of the shower today. I have to say, it is surprising how many of my “aha” moments came from showering. Must be the water… 
It’s the football season. Having just watched Spain lift the World Cup, the commentators talked about how Spain was so effective in their one touch (or first touch). I remember watching them. Their passing was very quick. Some of the time, all it took is a touch. I believe this is football skills at its highest. Not only you must receive the ball. You must diffuse the force from the ball, and redirect it to another player or space. This creates a kind of speed that is very rare in quality. It is not just speed, but efficiency coupled with accuracy. I find it quite hard to describe this quality, but I am sure you know it when you see it.
It is also like how my teacher does his Tai Chi push hands. It is definitely one touch. Once he touch, he knows where you are going, where is your imbalance point, how should he diffuse your force, and how should he redirect your force back to you. All from a single touch.
So what about the one touch emails I have just understood?
It’s again about deciding what to do with that email with just one touch. From the very first moment you saw that email, you must decide what to do with it at that moment itself. The direction must change in order for it to qualify as a one touch email. It must change to something different, something that moves towards the path to resolving that email. This is one touch email.
Let’s use an example. An email lands in your inbox. You look at it. You read it. You don’t have an answer. You don’t know what to do with it. You leave it there and look for some more interesting email. A few minutes later, (or hours) after you have gone through all the emails, you are left with no unread emails in your inbox. But those emails you have read are still there. You decide maybe you should now go through these emails more thoroughly and see if you can do something about them. So you open the email a second time. Looked at it, and can’t decide if you want to go out to dinner with a bunch of friends. You leave it in your inbox for the second time round. And go to the next “read” email. The cycle continues…
Now you see how one touch is so efficient. You have to know what to do with that email at the point you first see that email. You see, you read, you conquer i.e. you decide what is the next action for it. Most of the time, it’s probably delete. Otherwise, you just file it in your filing system. The remaining ones you can either decide what to do with it to move it along, or delegate it to someone else. Deciding what to with it might be simply calling Susan to find out who’s going to that party. You don’t have to answer Yes or No for now. As long as you know why is it you don’t want to attend the party. Maybe there’s someone you don’t like there, someone whom you just absolutely hate. So you think you better find out if this person is going. That is your very next action. Call Susan to find out. Or email Susan. This is the power of one touch. You have moved it closer to the resolution of that email.
Striving for the one touch philosophy is hard. I have been trying in my push hands, and now I will extend this quality to emails. Even though it’s hard, I like the quality of progress it gives. It makes competition irrelevant.
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