Hello and I hope you enojy this week's tip. Is Important really different from Urgent?

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Time Management Tip - Is Important really different from Urgent?

Focus on the Important rather than the Urgent.

This is a famous quote from Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective people. But it is very difficult to put this into practice.

I am constantly asked by people in my programs "how will I know what's important and what's urgent?" And "How can I ignore something urgent?"

Great questions. The first part of the answer is to understand what Covey means by urgent. Covey defines urgent as something external that "demands" your attention, like the phone, an email alert, a person in your office. Most people define urgent as a crisis.

A crisis, in Covey's model, is both Urgent and Important.

To improve your prioritization and know Important from Urgent you need to recognize the difference between a Crisis and an Interruption (that is not really a crisis).

The BENEFIT of knowing the difference between something appearing urgent and being really important is that you will spend less time on low impact distractions. This leaves more time for High Impact High Importance activities. Often High Importance tasks are ones that do not interrupt you. You need to find the time to do them, to do the Strategic Plan, to improve your health.

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May you have the time of your life this week.

Michael

Michael Erwin https://www.time-management-central.net

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