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September 24, 2006
Many years ago, when I graduated from college, one of my older brothers gave me a set of audio tapes that, I think, was marketed by the Day-Timer company. I don't remember the title or much of what was covered in the tapes, but the basic theme was how to make the best use of your time or something along those lines. The one thing I do remember was a chapter on doing what's important not what's urgent.
Do what's important, not what's urgent.... What exactly does that mean? What's the difference? Aren't most things that are urgent also important? No, not necessarily. Most people reading this article lead busy, hectic lives. If you work and have children, especially young children, you know exactly what I'm talking about. You get up tired, work hard, go to bed late without doing everything you needed to get accomplished that day and you repeat the process day after day. You think on your feet, eat on the run, and plan your life using the "just in time" model. Most things come at you as urgent, with a "you've got to do this right now" label attached (either literally or figuratively). It's easy to jump on problem after problem and soon you find that you've become a fire truck, putting out fires all the time.
What you really need to do is correct the things that start the fires... but how? How do you do that when you feel like your life is a merry-go-round going 90 MPH and you're hanging on by your fingertips? One way is to stop automatically responding to everything and everyone that demands your attention and handle the truly important things first. Ask yourself, is this important? Will it be important a week, a month, a year from now? Will it affect my children in a positive or negative way? Will it put me in a better financial position at some point in the future? Is it important to someone I care about? Will it make my marriage better or worse? Will it make me healthier? The list goes on and on, but you hopefully get the point.
We're a society, both in our personal lives and in our businesses, that has instant gratification at the center of most decisions and activities. We should look farther down the road and try to see how decisions made today will have an impact on our future. Even decisions that may seem harmless can have drastic implications. For instance, I just did a quick search on Yahoo to find the average TV viewing time per person. I found one study that says according to the Total TV Audience Monitor (T-TAM), DVR (digital video recorder) owners watch an average of 29.25 hours of TV in a week. That's 1521 hours per year or 63 days. Two months of time wasted. Is that good or bad? I think it's bad. Think about how much happier we'd be, how much stronger our marriages and relationships with our children would be, how much healthier we'd be, how much smarter we'd be, if we turned off the TV. In many homes the TV is like a light bulb, it's on as soon as you come home and off when you go to bed. In some houses, there's a TV in every room of the house. Not all TV is bad, but for the most part it's a waste of time. If you leave it on while you're doing other things, then it's a distraction that you could do without.
It's my opinion, that in addition to wasting time, most television programming chips away at moral values we desperately need to cling to and instill in our children.
Your telephone or telephones are another good example of wasted time. Most of us have a home phone and a cell phone. If you're married, your husband or wife probably has a cell phone. If you have children, they may have phones too. That's a lot of phones! One thing I like about newer phones is they have caller ID. Usually you can tell who is calling. Guess what, you don't HAVE to answer the phone. We've been programmed to jump up and get the phone. Why? Because, sometimes it's important and before caller ID you really didn't know who was calling. It feels strange, almost a guilty feeling when you don't answer the phone. The phone is a device that yells out urgency. But you have the ability to answer it only if it's truly an important call. Interruptions waste a lot of time, think before answering.
When someone asks you to do something, or when you start to do something, even activities you've been doing all along, ask yourself is this urgent or is it important? Is there something that's more important that I could be doing, maybe something that's not displaying a sense of urgency, but that is more important? You'll soon find it easy to say "no" to the urgent and "yes" to the important. And, you'll stop putting out fires all the time.
What can you do with the extra time? Spend it with your spouse and or your children, decide to learn something new, or build your future nest egg by learning how to create an Internet business, or learn to play an instrument, or teach your children how to play an instrument, take singing lessons, plant a garden, visit a retirement center or a hospital... the list goes on forever.
The next the phone rings, or the doorbell rings, or someone steps into your office.... Think before you take action. Weigh it's importance and it's urgency and go with the more important tasks.
Take care,
Fred
About the Author
Fred Black is an experienced online business operator, programmer, web site developer, father, husband, musician, and songwriter. Visit his Internet Business Blog at: http://www.pqInternet.com.
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Posted by Fred on September 24, 2006 | Printer-Friendly
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