Focusing on What's Important to Achieve Your Goals

One of the very first personal development books I ever read was Seven Habits of Highly Effective Individuals. If you’ve never read it before, I highly recommend picking it up. It’s one of the best.

Prior to starting my own personal growth journey I would have used this book as a punchline. Whenever I thought of it I pictured a middle management type sitting at his desk trying to figure out more ways to squeeze joy out of his life by being better at his job. It represented an old and stodgy approach to personal development geared towards making us all better “managers” in the service of business.

Luckily I found out I was wrong.

While the book does tend to have a more “professional” focus, the wisdom shared can be applied to all realms of life too.

And it provided me with one (of many) key insights that ended up being a game changer for me.

the Difference Between Urgent and Important

One of the key insights of the book can be represented by the chart below:

As you can see, there are two axis, Urgent and Important.

The chart is also divided into four quadrants, with the top right being labeled Urgent & Important; the bottom right being Urgent, Not Important; the top left is Important, Not Urgent; and the bottom left is Not Urgent, Not Important.

On any given day we’ll have a number of tasks and projects set in front of us. This could be work projects that show up in our inbox, at-home chores, personal development goals, family responsibilities, and/or community initiatives we’d like to be involved with. These all represent competing priorities in our world that we need to prioritize.

What do we focus on first?

Obviously the Urgent & Important tasks are number one. This could be crises, fires to put out at work (literal and figurative), immediate needs of people you’re close to, or other important pressing problems or deadlines. The key elements is that these are important things that need to be done right away.

Yet once that’s accomplished or if there’s nothing that falls into that particular category on the horizon, there’s a trap that awaits us for what we focus on next.

What is this trap?

It’s moving to focus on the projects or tasks in our world that show up as Urgent but Not Important. This is typically busy work, “squeaky wheels,” phone calls, meetings, and many emails. We feel like we need to knock these items off the list because they’re the ones dancing in front of our face needing to be addressed.

Worse yet, our world has evolved to more and more take advantage of this space. We might feel the need to get involved in an urgent conversation on social media or add our two cents to the milieu of takes about a current pressing political issue.

There’s a certain satisfaction that can emerge from jumping on this task and getting it out of our head, but is it really the best use of our time?

The Value in Focusing on What’s IMPORTant first

As strong as the urge might be to jump to that next most “urgent” yet unimportant task, the better use of your time is to focus on what’s Important, even if it’s not “Urgent.”

Here’s why.

By focusing on the Urgent instead of the Important we’ll constantly be in “putting out fires” mode. It becomes a great way to spin our wheels and seem busy when we're actually not getting much done at all.

One new priority will emerge after the other and no progress will be made on bigger plans.

We may find ourselves working on every new project that comes our way on an ad hoc basis without ever developing a framework for determining what truly is important and getting projects done more effectively.

To bring it back to the chart, we want to get in a habit of addressing the “Urgent & Important” items first, then moving to the “Important, Not Urgent,” rather than the “Urgent, Not Important.”

So what does Important but Not Urgent work look like?

Typically it can be projects like long-term planning, create frameworks or processes, and making time to explore new ideas and opportunities. It also means focusing on relationship building, personal growth and learning, or what I’ll call “effective downtime,” such as getting real rest or engaging in other renewing activities.

What happens to Urgent projects that don’t get addressed?

“But wait,” you ask, “How will the urgent stuff get done? It’s urgent!”

Strangely enough, the Urgent yet Unimportant projects out there have a way of sorting themselves out.

First off, part of prioritizing the Important over the Urgent will be developing systems and processes for everything you do. This will help you be more effective in general and will most likely lead to you handling some of those potentially urgent tasks before they even come up.

Other seemingly Urgent but Unimportant things in your life will fade away on their own.

That friend or coworker who’s always in crisis will find someone else to bother. That $10 item that you never returned to the store for a refund will find its way to Goodwill eventually. Life goes on.

And if any of those Urgent items really do become Important, they’ll find a way to get your attention when it’s needed. When/if that time comes you’ll address it as needed in between your other projects.

Focusing on What’s Important Takes Initiative

Here’s one important thing to realize about focusing on what’s important… It’s going to take initiative on your part.

You may have a manage or somebody in your life that will help coach you on this, but not everybody is so lucky. In fact, most of us have people in our lives that are constantly trying to impose what’s urgent to them on everybody else around them.

If you want to be effective in your own life, you’re going to have to make a deliberate concerted effort to not fall into the “Urgent” trap. You’ll have to conscientiously make time for what’s important and guard that time closely.

So let’s start on that now.

Is there room in your schedule to block off an hour for your most important projects and life goals? Can you do it daily? Or even just three times a week?

It might be a challenge to make this time for yourself at first, but if you can do it and stick to it you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you can accomplish. You may find yourself getting out in front of enough projects in your life to be able to carve out more “important” time going forward.

What will you work on with this time?

If you don’t know already, your first important project will be to figure out how you can focus more on what’s important.

So mark it on the schedule now. Block off the time and list your two or three most important projects to start on.

Your future self will thank you.