The Battle of the Urgent vs the Important
By: Tim Cynova // Published: March 28, 2017
Throughout our lives, we’re constantly fighting the Battle of The Urgent versus The Important. If left unchecked, the urgent will fill our days, seducing us with its sweet, false sense of accomplishment and distracting us from the *important* work that changes the world.
In this episode of How We Work:TV, we explore nine strategies that can help you manage your time and avoid letting the endless list of urgent distract you from higher purpose work.
Strategies include:
(1) Pregaming your work
(2) Drowning out your distractions
(3) Creating meeting-free zones
(4) Letting it go to voicemail
(5) Leaving breadcrumbs
(6) Deleting everything in your inbox
(7) Checking email only three times a day
(8) Don’t clean your desk
(9) Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good
Want more tips to help manage the Urgent versus the Important? Check out Harvard Business Review’s Guide to Getting The Right Work Done.
Tim Cynova is a leader, HR consultant, and educator dedicated to co-creating anti-racist and anti-oppressive workplaces through using human-centered organizational design. He is a certified Senior Professional in HR, trained mediator, principal at Work. Shouldn’t. Suck., on faculty at New York’s The New School and Canada’s Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and for the past twelve years served as COO and then Co-CEO of the largest association of artists, creatives, and makers in the U.S.
