ADHD: How to Decide Important Vs Urgent
A few years ago, though, a friend shared with me a concept which has literally changed my life.
One of the real struggles us Hunters typically have is sorting out the urgent from the important. It’s challenged me my entire life, and one of my correspondents had some very, very insightful thoughts on the subject:
Steve in Philadelphia says:
I’ve always kept a to-do list, and am pretty good about keeping dates organized on my laptop calendar. (I’m so ADHD and inherently disorganized, these are survival strategies!) A few years ago, though, a friend shared with me a concept which has literally changed my life.
I was going through my list of things to do with him, mostly bragging and complaining about how swamped I was.
“A lot of that seems urgent," he said. “But how much of it is important?”
“All of it!” I replied indignantly.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “I’ll bet a lot of those things that you think are important are really not all that important if you examine them in the context of your life’s goals. They just seem important, because they’re urgent.”
I was lost and asked him to explain.
“When the phone rings, is that urgent or important?” he asked.
“Both!” I said.
He shook his head. “Nope. You only know that it’s urgent. The ringing creates the urgency. But what if it’s some guy trying to sell you insurance?”
“I guess it could be either.”
“Right. Some things are urgent, but not important. Some are important, but not urgent. Some are neither, and some are both.”
“So I should only do the urgent and important things?" I said.
“Nope,” he said. “That’s the most common mistake people make. And what happens is that they end up not doing the important things, because they’re constantly dealing only with the urgent/important things. Remember the song Cat’s Cradle’?”
I nodded, thinking about the song about the dad who was always putting his son off, and when the son grew up he started ignoring his dad.
“Your family is important to you, right?” he said.
I nodded again, starting to see his point.
“But I’ll bet you haven’t spent much time with your kids this week, because you’ve been dealing with so many urgent things. So, instead, write down that you’re going to spend time with the kids. That’s important, and it needs to be done, too. And you’ll find the same thing is true in business, in your relationship with your wife, and in just about every other area of your life.”
So now whenever I’m looking over my To Do list, I ask myself, “Is this item important, or just urgent?”
And I’ve learned that my Hunter instinct pushes me toward handling the urgent things first, when actually they’re often not even all that important; they’re just easy to check off the list, or the most recent thing that was in my face. So now I’m working hard to deal with the important things, too.
Important versus urgent.. Sometimes there’s a big difference between them, sometimes only subtle, valued by you alone.
Thank you, Thom, for articulating the difference. You’re reminding me that no one reaches the end of their life thinking, “Gee, I wish I would have spent more time working” (or responding to those ‘urgent’ matters).
Beautiful.
Urgent often running the superficial aspects of life; important, our deeper connection to others and the values that unite us in peace and well being. We are now especially so led faster and faster by tech and AI into disconnect, division and turmoil.