Posted by Helen on: 10.25.2007 /
Eliza wrote this yesterday in a comment on 25 tips to become more productive and happy at work:
Have any of you seen (or heard about) Tyranny of the Urgent? I haven’t looked at this book (oops, actually it looks like a pack of 5 books according to the link) but the idea, as I’ve heard it, is to think of “importance” on one axis & “urgent” on the other, & to focus on those items which are important over those which seem urgent. Those which are “important’ but not ‘urgent’ often get overlooked. (Ironically, for me, this books/these books apparently talk about the whole idea from a Christian perspective, which somehow had gotten dropped along the way in the sources I’d previously heard about this).
Eliza continues:
One problem I find is, who defines “importance”? There are alot of high urgency tasks which I don’t think are important, but which are important to someone else, & that’s what kicks them up on the “to-do” list I’m presented with. Like, re-writing prescriptions that I wrote just 2 months ago, because someone’s insurance changed. What’s up with that? Isn’t that make-work????!!!!!! But my complaining about it hasn’t, so far, changed the situation.
I’ve heard about the important/urgent graph and how it’s wise to be careful that urgent but not important tasks don’t prevent the important but not urgent ones from getting done. But I hadn’t thought about how someone else’s ‘important’ might bump something up to ‘important’ on my list. I suppose it should at least some of the time or I can’t claim to be otherly! On the other hand, if I always let other people define what ‘important’ is for me then that would mean I have an unhealthy lack of boundaries. I need balance; I need to be able to say ‘no’ to someone else’s ‘important’ if appropriate.