Urgency deceives
May 24th, 2008A lot of us have trouble really getting things done in our life sometimes. It’s not because we don’t have the desire, it’s that there are so many distractions in the world. The professor I TA’d for last quarter shared this interesting graphic with the class, and I wanted to share it with you as well (with a little modification).
The idea behind this is to distinguish between URGENT and important.
URGENT is all caps and in red because it screams at us. We feel compelled to do URGENT things, either because there is an impending deadline, or because we are weak, easily tempted, beings.
important is in lower case and in green because although it does not always feel very compelling, it needs to be done.
Not URGENT/ Not important: Taking out the trash. It rarely screams at you to be done, and it doesn’t fulfill any long term goals. That’s not to say it shouldn’t be done.
URGENT/ Not important: Reading the next chapter of Harry Potter. Seriously, who can wait another day to find out what happens to Harry?
Not URGENT/ important: Building friendships. Crucial to anybody’s welfare, and yet often times we still feel antisocial, and our body compels us not to put ourselves out there.
URGENT/ important: Working on your resume for a position that’s due in 2 days. Building friendships might be crucial, but so is making yourself eligible for that position you’ve been salivating over.
I personally try to spend as little time as possible in the first two categories, but it’s hard. It’s easy to say, “What does it hurt to spend another 10 minutes reading Jimmy’s website, why limit myself?” It doesn’t hurt technically, it just takes away from time you could be spending on important things.
That’s the biggest limitation of all.
May 24th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
I’ve been neglecting more of the not URGENT/not important so now my room is really messy and things are less organized which may cause a problem with the URGENT/important.
Does this mean I should not read blogs as much so I can spend more time studying? Ehhhh haha
May 27th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
Hear, Hear!
I suppose the world’s most accomplished and productive person would be able to ignore and block out all the (usually) deceptive and hedonistic pulls of URGENCY and only act upon the more elevated and cerebral pulls of the IMPORTANT. So for that person, s/he’d only act on:
Not important | Not important
——————— ————————–
Important | Immediately important
But then again, that person would probably be insufferable to be with.
May 29th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
dude what was that story that you said you would blog about hmm? Well I guess scripting and lsat studying is more important. So you better be doing that instead of I duno…playing infantry…haha