I’m back!
After a 4 week hiatus, I’m back at it.
I know you missed me. You’ve been wondering, Is Jeff ok? Where has he been? What’s he been up to?
Well, here’s the scoop. For the past month, I have been running a little experiment on myself. I wanted to know what would happen if I tended to the most urgent things first without considering how important they were.
Kinda like the anti-Stephen Covey.
So often we unintentionally allow the urgent to crowd out the important even though pretty much any time management guru I’ve every read says to never do that, So, I decided to give the opposite a whirl and intentionally focus on the most urgent tasks first.
Now, I didn’t start the month out this way. It was simply that I had so many urgent things that had piled up, that I needed to address them as quickly and efficiently as I could. Then, as I moved through the urgent tasks, I started feeling this strong sense of accomplishment. It felt so good to be making progress that I decided to keep the same strategy for a full month to see what would happen.
Yes, I know what the experts say, “Do the important things first, it is analogous to putting the big rocks in the container before you add smaller and smaller rocks…” By this, they mean that if you focus on the important things, then your other tasks which are secondary and tertiary will follow more easily. Yet as the days went on, I was feeling better and better about how much I was getting done.
I even rearranged some priorities and aligned some important and urgent things. Hey, it was awesome.
Except one little thing. Somewhere at the top of the important list was writing an article every week. Writing an article is important because it keeps leadership issues at the forefront of my focus and attention. It is also one of the ways I communicate about leadership issues, thoughts and musings.
Hmm, maybe the experiment didn’t work so well after all. Dagnabbit the experts were right. Writing an article is not urgent. It is, however, extremely important. And when I focused on all the urgencies, the important got lost.
Now, I cannot promise an article every week right now, because there are some important and urgent things that are a bit higher on the priority list, but I will do my best.
Because it is important.
So, do the important things first. Those experts are right!
As always, [reminder]