Many of us can remember situations when we spent so much energy preparing for an event or presentation that when the great day finally arrived, we were so exhausted we just wished it would end quickly.
A homeowner would be too busy cleaning and decorating a home for an upcoming gathering or party that when the guests arrive, he or she would be too exhausted and too weary to talk enthusiastically with people.
A mother in the supermarket
needs to finish buying groceries, then suddenly her toddler child with her started having a tantrum. Should she stop doing groceries and talk to her child in the car or outside the supermarket, or should she let the child wail until she finishes her shopping?
In each of these cases, the urgent was confused with the important. The important items in the above examples were the entertaining of the guests and the proper behavior training of the toddler. The urgent were a clean house, ideal house and party set-up, and finishing the groceries. Every time the urgent is put first, the important takes second place.
This area confuses us sometimes that if we do not know which is important and which is urgent, people will frequently drag us around urging us to do what they think is urgent.
A colleague of mine was a conductor and member of a world famous choir. The constant touring and public appearances kept her away from her children most of the year. She needed these to build her career as a world class musician. Every time she comes home from a concert tour, her children would not even hug or kiss her. They would not even want to stay with her. She was almost a total stranger to them.
Sometimes only experience teaches us the difference.
How can we decide in our own lives which is important and which is urgent? To begin with we can ask our family’s opinions about their needs. In the workplace, we could ask our co-workers, subordinates, or superiors.
A wife decided to check with her husband about something important to him that she should do. His reply was simply “A smile when I come home and a peaceful conversation over freshly brewed coffee after dinner.” That eliminated quite a few urgent things.
Perhaps we can reevaluate some of the work around the house. Time consultant Alan Lakein suggests that one of the best ways to find time for important things is by reducing the less important jobs. He counsels, “Definite (superfluous tasks) include rearranging a pile of magazines, inventorying the freezer (when you just did it last month and nothing has changed significantly in the interim), mopping the kitchen floor just before the children come home on a rainy day…You can probably think of many other items that are too trivial to do, or will settle themselves by the passage of time, or are best forgotten unless there is a demand from an outside source…
“If you can let the dusting, washing, filing, or checking go for just one more day, then let it. You will have spent less of your life dusting, filing, and washing.”
Most importantly when distinguishing between the urgent and the important it is good to get an overview of the whole picture. We can make a personal time investment worksheet. Make a list of a number of things you see yourself doing. They could be at work, at home, your job, your recreation, however you see yourself spending major blocks of time, say more than thirty minutes a day. Now go down the three columns and evaluate how you feel about that area of expenditure; too little, just right, too much. Put a mark in the appropriate column.
When our list is completed, let’s ask ourselves which of these items are really important and which are only urgent (and which are neither). If we are spending too much time on some things that are not important and too little on something that is, then we will have a good starting point for change. Separating the urgent from the important has the potential of finding new areas of time for us everyday.
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