It happens to most people I know, including myself! We get swept up with our work and life and before you know it any systems you had set up to help you balance important and urgent tasks that were working, are unintentionally eroded. The systems are gone and have been taken over by the suck of fast paced demands and pulls of the 21st century world we live in.
In Stephen Coveys book, First Things First, begins to explain what is happening. He says, in the book, “consider whether you look at life through a basic paradigm of ‘urgency’ or ‘importance’?” He explores the effects of urgency addiction” and promotes a new perspective, “more than ‘time management’, it’s a generation of personal leadership. More than doing things right, it’s focused on doing the right things.”
What does this mean and how do you do it? There are many things to say about this but to me one of may favorite and first steps to tackle a life that has been consumed by the race of the urgent is to simply stop and get focused. This is a daily habit or practice that is good to do each day, ideally in an AM or PM routine. Here is how you do it:
1) brain dump everything that is on your mind onto a sheet of paper (please do not think that keeping lists in your head is effective, just like a computer will freeze up when to many windows and programs are running, so will your brain)
2) review your personal values (these are your passions, motivators and what makes you uniquely you)
3) review your big picture focus or goal (what are you aspiring to achieve in their period of your life)
4) select the 3 most important things you need to accomplish in order to move forward and remove the heaviest weight that is burdening you (often what weights on us is not what we do – that is what we procrastinate about – what we do is usually quick, insignificant to-do’s). Write these 3 things on a sticky note and post it where you can see it all day.
5) commit to 30 minutes a day to work on one of the items. Ideally an hour first thing in the AM, but protecting some time to really work on the top 3 each day is a great start.
This is the first step in thinking about your life strategically vs. reactionary. There is much more to balancing all parts of your life, living in line with your values, prioritizing, etc. but at times when we get so overloaded it is good to have a simple approach to remove yourself from the beginning of a crisis cycle and get back to putting first things first.
Be strategic!
Christy
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