Importance and Urgency

Here are the main points I address. View the video for more explanation:

• Priorities
• Moment-to-moment. What do I do right now?
• Overarching Purpose, big life goals (goals don’t necessarily = achievements)
• “What’s the next right thing?”
• Sometimes the thing you should focus on right now is not necessarily what’s the most important to you, it’s just the most urgent.
• Urgency = time-sensitive. If I don’t address this soon, the consequences will be more significant.
• The reality is that sometimes the things that are most important can wait. Sometimes that’s a relief, and sometimes that’s a challenge.
• We don’t need to feel guilty about telling the important elements of our lives to just hang in there sometimes, or even most of the time.
• Sometimes we spend years, entire chapters of our lives keeping our heads above water, putting out fires. And that’s OK if it is just for a season.
• Like so many things, it comes down to intentionality. Sometimes importance and urgency align, and the next right step is clear, but often we need to choose one or the other.
• One discipline is to make these choices, then commit to them and not spend our lives agonizing over how much we wish we could spend all of our time on the things we truly care about the very most. That’s not realistic, and we need to give ourselves grace by remembering the whole context – the whole picture surrounding our choices. We can remind ourselves “There was a reason I prioritized this, so I’m going to address this and let go of the what-ifs.”
• The other discipline is to keep the most important things within arm’s reach, to return to them as we are able so that we don’t get to the end of our lives, regretting that we never made time for them.
• Life can be challenging, because sometimes the things that are only somewhat important demand our immediate attention, and other times neglecting those “somewhat important” things – sometimes even letting them fizzle out and die – is the only way to move toward the things that are most important.