If you've ever shared living space with others, you're quite aware of the problem: Dishes in the sink! It's always been a problem ever year (mostly because I've had different roommates every year). This year I ended up diagnosing the problem and it the way it starts is when the dishwasher is running someone innocently places their dish in the sink (after all the dishwasher is running). Then the next person comes up and sees a dish so places his/her dish and so on. All of a sudden, the dish is full because everyone saw a dish in the sink and thought “Why should I wash all these dishes?” Additionally, until the sink is full the new standard to balance a stacking act of dishes. Then finally, the situation worsens until everyone realizes that the stack is dangerously high and then drama ensues over who has to wash all the dishes.

This is an interesting problem as it happens all the time. It all starts with a simple situation when we can defer an action to another date due to the present state.  In the example of the dishes in sink, we have a queue to keep our dirty dishes until the dishwasher is clear. However, it turns out others are less opposed to moving dishes from sink → dishwasher than actually cleaning the dish. It turns out an easy solution is to clean the dish while the dishwasher is full and leave that cleaned dish waiting to be placed in the dishwasher into the sink. Thus cleaning is the action we defer. Similarly, if we're faced with a situation where we can defer action, stop and think about how work will just compound. Rather just commit as many actions as possible to minimize future effort once you're ready to move your “dish” into the dishwasher.

Bottom Line: Minimize as much effort for the future because it'll eventually compound and “overflow your sink”.