The challenge with urgency and short term thinking

When you look back on your life, what will you be most proud of?  What kind of accomplishments will you most value?

Do you think getting to “Inbox Zero” on a random Monday morning in November will come to you as one of your great memories?  How about checking your Facebook news feed 11 times an hour?

Probably not.  Those are probably not things that we will remember as the great accomplishments of our lives.

Maybe we will remember creating, nurturing and launching into the world good and functional human beings (otherwise known as kids).  Maybe we will remember the house we built or the stone walls in our garden.  Maybe we will be most proud of our leadership, our business accomplishments or the fruits of our creative minds.

What are the difference between the inbox and the book written?  What are the differences between checking your timeline and creating a lasting relationship?

The two differences I wanted to consider today are urgency and timeframe.

Most of us have read the great and seminal work of Stephen Covey; “The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.’  In that great work Covey created a matrix of activity that you could use to decide what to work on and what to pursue.

He does a much better job of explaining it and I’m going to devalue this concept by taking it out of context, but let’s review.

On one side of the matrix he posited that there is a spectrum of importance that all activities and project sit on.  If you were forced to put all your activities into one of two piles they would be important and unimportant.  For instance taking you sick child to the doctor is important.  Playing the zombie game on your computer is not important.  If you had limited time and had to choose you’d hopefully choose to take your child to the doctor.

On the other side of the matrix is urgency.  How urgent is the task or project?  Taking your child for a routine checkup sometime this month is not incredibly urgent.  Taking your child to the emergency room because they are going into anaphylactic shock from a bee sting is incredibly urgent. All your projects and activities can be ranked as urgent or not urgent.

Now if you draw a line between the urgent and not urgent and another between the important and not important you end up with a four box matrix.  In this four box matrix the boxes are called quadrants.

The quadrants are the different combinations of important and urgent.

Stick with me, I know you’ve probably heard all this before but there is an important modern twist to it that I’m laying the groundwork for.

Quadrant 1 is all the things that are neither urgent nor important.  Maybe playing that zombie game is one of those.  (Although you can rationalize a case for many quadrant 1 activities that they are recreational and re-charge you batteries.)

Quadrant 2 is Urgent but not important.  These are things that are banging away at you for your attention but either have no consequence or add little value.  Most admin tasks fall into this category and many meetings.

Quadrant 3 is Urgent and important – i.e. taking the bee-sting child to the emergency room to save their life.  These are things that need to be done right now, they have consequences.  Many of your core work and career activities fall under this category.  If you’re a sales person this might be the face to face meetings with customers or the prospecting calls.

Quadrant 4 is where the gold is.  Quadrant 4 are those tasks and projects that are important, but not urgent.  Because they are not urgent they get postponed or don’t make it to your to-do list.

In Covey’s discussion of this he tells us to look at all the things that chew up our days and plot them into these useful quadrants.  For the not urgent and not important try to stop doing them.  For the urgent but not important, see if you can eliminate or delegate.  For the Urgent and Important figure out how to do them well and efficiently.

Like I said, the gold is in the quadrant 4 activities.  They are important but not urgent.  The trick is to move them into your task or project list so they get worked on.  These quadrant 4 activities add outsized value to your life and to the organization you are working with.  You make room to work on these by pushing quadrant 1 and 2 tasks off your list.

It is up to you to raise the priority of these important things so they don’t get lost in the wash of life.

The goal is not to be busy.  The goal is to be effective and add value.

Why am I bringing up this old, old concept and framework today in 2016?  First because it is timeless.  Second because it has become increasingly relevant in the social media and internet age.

When you look at the things you will be proud of at the end of your stay here in this frame and form they will invariably be long term, high value and important projects.  They will be important but not urgent.  Typically, the gold, the quadrant 4 things are long term in nature.

In today’s environment nothing is long term.  In today’s environment you get no impetus, coaching or encouragement to engage in long term projects.

The only one who can make these things part of and a priority in your life is you.  Everyone one else, all the institutions and now all the technologies do not consider these things a priority and will actively campaign to get you to adopt their priorities.

The things that flash on your phone demand you attention right now.  They add no long term value.

This ties back to the having a long term view of your world.  This ties back to knowing deep down in your soul what is important to you.  This ties back to the artificial urgency of social media to get your attention.

There is no company out there that cares about your long term projects.  They only care about influencing what you do right now.  Look at something.  Share something.  Buy something.  Right now.

You’re not going to get a pop-up add that says “live a healthy life, eat well and exercise.”  You will get an ad that says “Sign up today to lose 10 pounds in 10 days.”

You’re not going to get an ad that says “Spend wisely, save money and invest in your future”.  You will get an ad that says “Buy this amazing stock and get rich right now!”

All of the truly important things that you want to do with your life have no urgency other than the urgency you create.  You have to do this.  No one is going to do it for you.  You will be swimming against a tide of environmental forces that could care less about your important work, about your legacy about the value of your time.

Take a moment or two of introspection and measure how you spend your time for a week or two.  How much is filled with constructed, urgent but unimportant alerts?  Take that control back.

Identify those non-value added things that urgently tug at your sleeve.  Stop doing them and instead write or read or exercise for those 5 or 10 or 15 minutes.

I’m going to give you some homework.  For the next 30 days I want you to choose some urgent but not important activities to eliminate.  Send me an email and let me know what they are.  Then I want you to work on one long term value added project that is important to you but not urgent.  It could be reading Moby Dick or writing a novel.  Carve out 15 minutes a day for it for 30 days.  Send me an email and let me know what it is.

I’ll give updates.  Send me an audio if you want and I’ll play it.

Let’s do this together as a team.