Putting the “Important but Not Urgent” Tasks Above the “Urgent but Not Important” Tasks

Our life can be a wel­ter of dead­lines, to-do’s and events, so that it’s so hard to breath easy or take a step back and take stock of the things hap­pen­ing to us. But there are more impor­tant things in life than the urgent. The urgent allows us to get by on a day to day. But just doing the day to day makes us lose focus on the more long term and the more last­ing things.

This arti­cle is a good reminder that there are more long last­ing activ­i­ties that we need to do as well–for our peace of mind, for our wholis­tic growth, for the things we really love.

From the Sim­ple Dol­lar.

One of the biggest per­sonal and pro­fes­sional frus­tra­tions that I have (and that a lot of oth­ers seem to share) is that there’s never enough time to get to the impor­tant things we want to do.
We want to do things like…

• visit an old relative
• cre­ate a mas­ter infor­ma­tion document
• work on a big project
• make out a will
• get involved in a com­mu­nity organization
• get our mas­ters degree in the evenings and weekends

Instead, we fill our time…

• catch­ing that can’t-miss show on television
• surf­ing the web for some obscure piece of trivia
• answer­ing the phone and chat­ting with who­ever answers
• deal­ing with email
• doing dishes
• stop­ping at the gro­cery store for the third time this week

The first group of tasks are things that I would call “impor­tant but not urgent.” These are things that don’t have to be addressed imme­di­ately, but still have seri­ous impor­tance and value in our lives.

The sec­ond group of tasks are things that I would call “urgent but not impor­tant.” These are things that try to grab our atten­tion and focus now but have no real impact on our long-term lives.

It’s easy to let our lives be run by the things that are “urgent but not impor­tant.” Most large bureau­cra­cies func­tion in this way. I know that my pre­vi­ous job cer­tainly did at times. We often man­age our lives this way – we’ll look around, ask our­selves what needs to be addressed right now, and then focus on deal­ing with that task just because it’s due today, even if it’s triv­ial com­pared to a much more impor­tant thing.

We’ll answer the phone sev­eral times in an hour even though it means con­stantly step­ping away from a big project.

We’ll watch the big game tonight and call our elderly mother in a few days.

We’ll surf the web for trivia but let our dreams of a mas­ters degree sit idle.

I do this myself, more often than I would like. Since I have two arti­cles “due” on a given day for The Sim­ple Dol­lar, it’s often eas­i­est to focus wholly on the task that needs to be done today (those two arti­cles) instead of step­ping back and look­ing at the big­ger pic­ture of writ­ing really long-lasting use­ful infor­ma­tion. It’s eas­ier to look around the house, see a big mess, and tackle it, even though my kids are qui­etly clam­or­ing for more atten­tion.
I find that four lit­tle things help me keep the “impor­tant but not urgent” in the fore­front and let the “urgent but not impor­tant” things slide:

1. I’m unafraid to turn off my phone and email. Clos­ing off chan­nels through which the “urgent but not impor­tant” tasks can inter­rupt the “impor­tant but not urgent” tasks goes a long way towards main­tain­ing my focus in the right areas. If it’s not impor­tant, it can wait. If it truly is impor­tant, I’ll know about it as soon as I’m avail­able since I’ll check my messages.
2. I block off time for long-term projects. I spend part of every day focused on projects with a long-term pay­off. For exam­ple, for much of July, August, Sep­tem­ber, and Octo­ber, I focused heav­ily on the man­u­script of my book. This didn’t help me at all in my day-to-day work, but it did build some­thing with much greater long-term value. (Yes, I’m work­ing on a long-term project now related to The Sim­ple Dol­lar – no, I’m not ready to announce it.)
3. I some­times will utterly drop the unim­por­tant but urgent things if they’re get­ting in the way. Some­times I’m over­whelmed with lit­tle requests. If I focused on noth­ing but those requests, I’d never get any­thing done. So, some­times, I just have to drop those requests. I’ll put off respond­ing to an email – or not even respond at all if there’s not an obvi­ous answer needed. I’ll skip watch­ing the “big game” and catch the high­lights later. I’ll actively choose to put my com­mu­ni­ca­tions devices away.
4. I’m acutely aware of what’s truly impor­tant to me – and what isn’t. One final trick is under­stand­ing what’s actu­ally impor­tant to me – and how rel­a­tively impor­tant var­i­ous things are. Quite often, it’s easy to sub­sti­tute urgency for impor­tance – but that often leaves you putting out fires and not really accom­plish­ing any­thing. Some­times, it’s best to ignore the fires and focus on the impor­tant things.

As I often say to my wife, “Don’t worry about it. I’d rather have dirty floors and well-adjusted chil­dren than a spot­less house and sullen kids.”