is at stake (or at least seems to be, and there’s no way you’d take
a chance with something like that), and the situation demands
immediate action.
So it is with anything in life that is both important and urgent.
Although it may demand a great deal from us, it does not require
any decision making.
Case C, the discussion about your relationship, is also clearly
quite important but may lack a sense of urgency (why now?) or
even seem inappropriate (not now!).
Case B, with poor Carol and Bobby in Oregon, seems some-
what less important because it’s one step removed from your SO,
and perhaps even less urgent.
Case D carries with it the least sense of urgency.
There really is an important, maybe even urgent, point to qual-
ifying your decisions. The problem for most of us occurs in cat-
egories B and C, the “important but not urgent” and the “urgent
but not important.” Specifically, you may be spending too much of
your time doing the Cs and not enough time on the Bs.
The SeCre T OF Time managemenT reVea LeD: WhY We
WaST e Time On TriVia anD D On’ T SpenD enOUgh Time On
eSSen Tia LS
This concept was discussed in depth in Chapter 3, Busy or Pro-
ductive? So, it’s necessary only to point out here that life is full of
a series of rapidly occurring urgencies that really don’t make any
difference in the long run (or even in the short run, for that matter).
Yes, you’re four minutes late for that department meeting. But the
department meeting is a fat waste of everybody’s time (including the
person running it), ninety minutes of plodding through announce-
ments you could have read for yourself (or chosen to ignore).
Technology has increased our sense of urgency, but the deliv-
ery system has no bearing on the importance of the content.
I S I T R E A L LY I M P O R TA N T --- O R M E R E LY U R G E N T?