Wow! You Are Pulled By The Urgent!

What’s pulling you – what’s urgent, loud, or exciting? Or are you pulled by what’s a priority, important, and practically silent?

I know you’ve witnessed this scene: a dog owner racing behind a dog attempting to keep up. Literally the dog owner is being walked by the dog! You might picture a great big dog, but honestly it’s often a small dog dragging their owner along! It’s a comical sight!

When you are sprinting from one urgent fire to another, you are pulled as if you were leashed to the urgent.

The Lie of the Urgent

When the urgent is pulling you, you feel productive, important, perhaps even needed! Those are all good feelings, but they aren’t going to get you where you want to be!

What you miss is that while you are hot on the heels of the urgent, you are neglecting what’s actually most important. Even more disheartening, the pull of the urgent often creates more fires, more trouble, so you continue to be consumed with…the urgent!

Here’s a look at the Time Matrix – a way of looking at how you use your time that was first developed by President Eisenhower and Stephen Covey highlighted in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Ideally, the more time you spend in Quadrant #2, not only will you get more done, but you will get more of the RIGHT stuff done!

However, as long as you are tethered to the urgent, the bulk of your time will be spent in the other three quadrants.

The Cost of Pursing the Urgent

What’s the problem with being pulled by the urgent? It’s costly! When you are perpetually being pulled by the urgent you…

1. Forget What Is Most Important!

As a leader, it’s the time you spend reflecting, evaluating where you are at, and planning the path forward that determines whether or not you reach your goals. It’s also in those reflective moments that you are able to step back, see the problems, and make invaluable adjustments. You also spot what’s being done well, and that’s encouraging!

2. Stagnate

Key skills don’t get developed when you are allowing the urgent to dictate how you use your time. Your ability to grow and expand your skillset is a must as a leader – you don’t want to stagnate!

3. Sacrifice Your Best Self

Running around putting out fires is exhausting, and in that condition you aren’t as creative, strategic, or able to apply your best thinking like you would if you were more refreshed. When pulled by the urgent, you sacrifice your best self!

4. Aren’t Stewarding Well

You probably aren’t maximizing your own time and resources when you are pulled by the urgent, and that has an impact on everyone else’s time and resources too. Wasted time and resources ultimately translate into wasted dollars and hurting the bottom line.

5. Skip Essential Activities

When you are pulled by the urgent and frantic feels normal, you are far more likely to skip the activities that would fill you up and energize you. Personal activities like spending time with God, exercising, engaging in self-care, and connecting with the treasured people in your life all go by the wayside as the urgent edges them out.

As a leader, I’ve already mentioned how essential it is for you to step back and reflect, plan, and strategize – all tasks that only you can do. There are other activities that don’t get the attention they deserve, like nurturing the relationships with those you lead, networking, and intentionally developing yourself.

6. Aren’t As Productive

Achieving goals requires that you consistently do specific tasks – those essential baby steps. Those tasks whisper, while the urgent roars. Your brain gravitates towards what feels urgent. It feels compelled to respond to the roar at the expense of more important and quieter tasks.

When addressing the urgent, you are busy, but don’t mistake busy with productive.

7. Develop Unhealthy Habits

Good habits don’t just happen. They require you to be intentional and are cultivated over time. Bad habits, on the other hand, seem to naturally set in with very little effort at all.

Just a few of the “urgent” habits that might fall into this category are…

• • • Perpetually checking emails, texts, etc. or checking after work hours.
    • Feeling compelled to respond immediately to emails text, etc.
    • Having regular meetings just because.
    • Putting off bedtime to accomplish one more thing.
    • Feeling you must maintain an open door policy.
    • Skipping breaks.

This list is hardly exhaustive. There are numerous other habits that I’m sure you could add that aren’t serving you.

8. Hurt Your Relationships

When you allow the urgent to pull you, it sends the message to the people in your life that they aren’t as important. Relationships suffer without intentional effort.

Frequently the relationship that suffers the most is your relationship with God. You might turn to Him begging for help when the urgent stumps you, but what He really longs for is for you to regularly linger in His presence and to get to know Him in a deeper way.

9. Burnout

When pulled by the urgent, you are in survival mode and just hoping you can keep up without falling flat on your face! You can only be in survival mode for so long before you burnout and have nothing left to give.

Operating sustainably and chasing the urgent are definitely at odds with one another.

10. Don’t Get Results

The chances of you reaching your goals, getting great results, or enjoying the rewards of your efforts just aren’t there when you are at the mercy of the urgent. As a leader, it’s your job to facilitate getting results!

Maybe you aren’t a leader, but the same thing applies to you personally! You won’t get where you want to be leashed to the urgent!

Making The Switch

So how do you make the switch from chasing the urgent to pursuing what’s important?

First you must acknowledge that you have been at the mercy of the urgent. Then decide you are ready for a new approach to your life and work. Declare it a new day! Rather than running from fire to fire choose to turn your attention to fire prevention.

What does that look like in practical terms?

1. Become More Aware.

Just for fun, think about the activities you did yesterday. Which of the four quadrants of the Time Matrix do yesterday’s activities fall into? I hope it was quadrant #2, but if it wasn’t it’s a new day!

Become more aware of how you are using your time and take deliberate steps to invest the majority of your time in quadrant #2.

2. Mine the Mindsets

What are the funky mindsets that have leashed you to the urgent in the first place? Your thinking is what drives your feelings, which then determine your actions; it’s worth digging into the thinking that’s at the root.

Is your Fear Monster at work? Are you operating under the belief that you don’t have enough time? Are you attempting to people-please? Or is it something else?

3. Give Yourself Permission

Yes, give yourself permission to pause, assess what needs to be done, and to carefully prioritize. This isn’t a luxury! It’s a necessity, and a powerful skill/habit!

I encourage you to do this annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily. And for some, you may need to consider three, five, ten or twenty years out depending on your role.

Remember, what’s most important is quiet. There’ll still be roaring, but train yourself to tackle what’s most important first. The more you do this, the fewer emergencies will crop up.

4. Get Comfortable With Feeling Uncomfortable.

It takes practice to ignore the roar of the urgent and to dismiss distractions. At first it feels strange and uncomfortable, but in the end it actually feels quite freeing!

My phone has remained on silent for several months now and it’s been wonderful! No longer am I knee-jerk responding or breaking my concentration. It allows me to remain focused on what I’m doing!

You might be surprised that what’s roaring can wait!

Take baby steps, but build up your tolerance for ignoring what feels urgent.

5. Practice the Art of Prioritizing

There’s plenty vying for your attention every day! Being able to prioritize is essential for your success!

If you are a leader, your team is looking to you to communicate the priorities, and you can’t do that if you don’t know what they are.

Beware! You may start the day with clear priorities, but then the unexpected pops up. You must also be able to re-prioritize along the way.

The bonus, by focusing on what’s most important, the busywork naturally gets left behind!

6. Create Systems & Boundaries

What systems or boundaries do you need to have in place? For example, you might…

• • • Spend the first 15 minutes each day prioritizing what needs to be done.
    • Block off time in your schedule for important tasks.
    • Respond to emails at specific times like first thing in the morning or after lunch.
    • Eliminate distractions – turn off all notifications.
    • Stick to a bedtime.
    • Spend time with God first each morning.
    • Determine what qualifies as urgent.
    • Get clear on what actions are needed to get the results you are after.
    • Carve out time to rest and take vacations – they are needed!

You get to decide how you want to do life and work!

7. Delegate and/or Automate

While time consuming up front, delegating or automating tasks saves you oodles of time down the road! It’s is worth the effort and it transfers skills to others allowing you to focus on more of what only you can do. This is true in a corporate, non-profit, or ministry setting and equally important in your home! The more your kids take on at home, the better prepared for life they will be!

8. Lean Into Who God Created You To Be

When you aren’t relying on God and walking in who He created you to be you are far more likely to get pulled by the urgent. Somehow, the draw to the urgent makes you feel important or necessary, but it doesn’t get you where you want to be.

Each time you notice the pull of the urgent winning, pause and remember how loved you are by God and who He designed you to be. Anchored in that, you are better able to regroup and approach your life and work in a more productive way.

What’s being pulled by the urgent costing you? What next step will you take to do life and/or work differently?