Let’s define important as something which should take precedence over everything else. Important work either preserves life (food, shelter, health, mental wellbeing, etc.) or fulfills purpose. Sometimes it accomplishes both. A distinguishing characteristic of important work is that it is defined by us…not by others.
Urgent work, which often gets in the way of important work, is what gets most of our attention. It’s the firehose of constant inbound interruptions, deadlines, compelling projects and tasks which must be done now. While urgent is usually seen as an outside force, it is ultimately controlled by us. We can choose (not without consequence) whether to make it urgent for us.
Making it even more confusing…what is urgent might also be important. But, what Is important might not be urgent at all. The question is whether the urgent helps propel or support the change we seek to make. Does it help us achieve our legacy. If not, it’s not important, and we should recognize and prioritize it as such. It should take a back seat to doing the more meaningful, legacy work we have determined to be important.
Caring enough to regularly show up to do important work and to prioritize it ahead of urgent is a tall order. The only thing stopping us from doing this is…you guessed it, ourselves. But once we care enough to define what’s truly important, and then commit to it, the rest is merely noise…noise we create for ourselves to keep us from actually doing the work we’re called to do. What we do with the noise, the distractions, is one of the most important, and human, acts we get to do. And most of us are fortunate enough to have the slack to rearrange our priorities. Too often though, we just choose not to. What a shame.
Choose wisely.