What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important

I was reminded of this quote from Eisenhower the other day:

What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important

I was looking at a long list of tasks that all seemed to urgently stare me in the face. Each of them was blinking like the red light screaming at Sandra Bullock in Gravity, calling to me to be worked on.

In times like this, I think the Time Management Matrix from Covey’s 7 Habits book is a good exercise to start with. (succinctly described here) It’s a good way to look at what’s screaming at you and think about separating the important from the non-important and critically analyzing yourself on whether you are taking the time to work on important things that are not urgent.

It’s really the latter (quadrant 2) that worries me the most sometimes. If we are not taking the time to strategically think through what are the most important things we need to get done this week, this month, this quarter, or this year, we tend to let those little blinking red lights tell us what to do and we end being automatons, following whatever fire-drill happens to have the most sirens.

It’s not all that bad to respond to fire-drills. Certainly any important things (quadrant 1) are important. But, for a lot of us, if the source of the tasks we choose to do is entirely driven by quadrant 1, then I think it’s a good time to stop. Think about what our strategy and goals are for the year, for the month, for the quarter, whatever, and then make sure that we are forcing what is important to the forefront whether or not it is the loudest voice.