Finding Meaning and Success by Chris Palmer

Author:Chris Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2021-05-29T00:00:00+00:00

Urgent versus Important Actions

Having an effective daily routine requires you to distinguish urgent from important actions and tasks.

Important things—but usually not urgent—include creating a personal mission statement, setting goals, seizing new opportunities, strategizing, anticipating challenges, preparing, preventing crises, learning, and working out ahead of time how to deal with potential problems.

Other important things include reading, writing, taking professional-development courses, helping a struggling child, rehearsing a presentation well ahead of schedule, spending time listening to people who matter to us, getting feedback, and acting on personal development goals.

All of these should be top priorities, but none of them are urgent. They can all be done next week or even next month, but it would be far better not to postpone them.

Time-management expert Roger Merrill points out that many of the things that are important to us—things that contribute to the richness of our lives and give us meaning and purpose—are not urgent. They don’t press us for our attention the way a ringing phone, an interruption, or the arrival of a new email does.41

Important matters that are urgent, such as the unexpected resignation of the CEO of your company, get attended to for obvious reasons. But important matters that lack urgency are easy to ignore or postpone. Putting them aside in this way is a mistake. Nonurgent, important issues should not be neglected or postponed. Successful people spend time on important things, even if those things have no urgency attached to them.

Don’t let urgent things displace important things. Having a personal mission statement, a set of goals, and an effective daily routine help prevent this from happening. Unimportant but urgent things should never be given priority over important yet not urgent things.

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