For most of us, our priorities are dictated by the most urgent crisis that needs fixed.
- The car won’t start.
- The washer is broken.
- My boss needs a report by the end of the day.
- My taxes are due tomorrow.
For many of us who are knowledge workers,[footnote]That is to say, basically anyone who does anything other than physical, manual labor, but many of them likely experience this in some ways as well[/footnote] our email inboxes and message notifications often dictate our schedules, our priorities, and what we’re going to achieve for the day.
Stephen Covey broadly popularized an idea originally attributed to president Dwight Eisenhower. It’s a matrix of the and the important.
Quadrants 1 and 3 is where many of us spend most of our time–dealing with problems that need fixed immediately and then bouncing from that do dealing with unimportant problems that someone thinks also needs solved immediately.
The ideal situation is to be in Quadrant 2, where we are doing important things which aren’t urgent. That’s because we’re doing work that matters, but we’ve planned well enough that we don’t have to fly from one urgent problem to another. We have margin in our schedule and life, and we don’t have to focus all of our energy on putting out fires. Urgent and important things will still come up, but far less frequently if we actually live out our priorities and plan accordingly.
We’re doing things that matter, but we’re not stressed because they are so pressing everything will fall apart if they don’t get done.
So why do so many of us feel stuck in doing the urgent things?
Why Do We Do This to Ourselves?
Why do we live in Quadrant 1? Well, because it’s the natural slant of things. As the more kid-friendly version of the saying goes, “Poop rolls downhill.”
If we don’t plan, if we don’t focus, if we just run around from fire to fire, we can’t get out of the crazy cycle, and we’re standing at the bottom of the excrement-covered hill.
Also, our brains love responding to notifications and sounds and beeps and boops.
The ding of a cell phone notification. The icon of more email coming in. Endorphins! Excitement! Maybe that’s the email I’ve been waiting for on my inheritance from a Nigerian prince!
I’m a perpetrator in every way. I’m easily distracted, and as much as I desire to be focused, I let the temporary and urgent take precedence over the eternal and important.
We’re letting other people dictate our lives.
The problem is that at the end of my life, when I stand face to face before God, only I will answer for how I stewarded my life. I can’t shift blame to email inboxes or bosses or kids or spouses. I will have to say, “This is what I did with the talents you gave me.”
The second reason I let other people tell me what to do is because I’m trying to please people. I respond quickly to their messages and their emails, and they probably think that’s pretty neat. I like it when people think I’m neat or efficient and organized, so I let that underlying motivation propel me to check my email 50 times a day.
No one has ever changed the world by being a speedy email responder. Perhaps changing the world isn’t your goal. Well, nevertheless, there are no gold stars for email response time in the real world. The difference between 5 minutes and 5 hours on non-urgent responses is miniscule at best. A timely response is all that’s necessary, [footnote]Depending on the nature of the message, I’d say 24 hours is more than appropriate and fair[/footnote] and you get nothing but diminishing returns beyond that.
There’s a certain level of adult responsibility, human decency, and things you have to do to keep your job wrapped up in all of this, but what if we only checked our email twice a day instead of twice an hour. What if people had to wait an hour or two for non-urgent responses to text messages? What if we decided each morning our priorities and actually followed through on them?
Personally, I feel like I’m doing my best work when I’m helping others–when I’m sharing what I’m learning, solving problems, thinking deeply about things, and crafting systems that make lives better. But often I’m jumping from fire to fire, helping someone fix something that’s broken and needed to be fixed five minutes ago.
Maybe you’re persuaded. Maybe you’ve decided it’s time to stop working in this crazy way, under mounting stress, without priorities or boundaries.
So how do we fix this?
How Do We Get Out of This Cycle?
1. Take a step back and evaluate what you want to do with your life
If you want things to keep going the way they are, that’s fine. Don’t change anything. Don’t evaluate or define your priorities.
However, if you’d prefer to be more focused and disciplined, then start by figuring our your personal mission and goals.
Write them down. Look them over. Create steps for what it takes to get there.
Then bit by bit, start tackling them. Let the motivation for reaching your goals drive you to change your priorities and stop living for the urgent instead of the important.
2. Start by changing the things that keep you from fulfilling those priorities
If you want to write a book, but you don’t write currently, I’m going to bet against you cranking out a novel anytime soon.
If I spent 15 minutes less on social media each day, I could use that time to start writing a book.
If I processed all of my email twice a day instead of answering it as it comes in, I could save a half hour and use that time for reading or ideation.
Identify your biggest time wasters and stop doing one of them this week, and replace that with a good habit that gets you closer to your goal.
When you feel the urge to check your email or Facebook (or whatever other thing you’re trying to change), do something that gets you closer to your goal.
3. “Train” others in how you best help them
If something isn’t urgent, I’d prefer someone sends me an email instead of a text message.
A text message feels urgent–my phone vibrates, lights up, shows a number on my green message icon, and bothers me until I do something about it. That’s distracting for me. So email is better because I can turn off those notifications without missing an urgent message from my wife.
So, if anyone sends a major request (something that requires more effort than a quick reply), I normally ask them to send me an email with more details. It’s easier to manage an email inbox than a string of text messages.
Training someone in how you best work and respond helps you do what’s important and helps them get what they want too.
It’s a win-win.
4. Create a stop doing list
I need to stop:
- Checking my email so frequently (flesh out ideas instead)
- Visiting Twitter and Facebook multiple times per day (write a piece for a blog post instead)
- Reading ephemeral content (instead pick up where I left off in a book I’m currently reading)
I just wrote those things on a post it note and put them on my desk. That’s a constant reminder to do things that mater.
What if you stopped doing one thing this week that’s forcing you to live in the urgent instead of the important? What a difference one change can make in making a greater impact.
Wrapping Up
Mostly I’ve tee’d off on social media and notifications as the perpetrators of forcing us to live for the urgent instead of the important. That’s because those two things, in their very nature, appear urgent.
Twitter shows you your most recent tweets. Your phone lock screen shows your most recent messages. I can’t ignore something that’s in my face.
Undoubtedly, there are lots of problems with the way we work beyond Twitter and texts. But it’s a start, and it’s a syndrome of a deeper problem that enables us to reach for the low-hanging junk food of quick, fast, instant satisfaction and updates instead of the more important, effort-required tasks that actually make a difference.
The way most of us work is crazy. And it’s up to us to change it.