(If you receive this via email, click on the title to see the rest of the post or go to a more extensive piece on the site, with more links: Important, Highly Important, And... Investing Your Gold.)
"Important means: long-term, foundational, coherent, in the interest of many, strategic, efficient, positive..."
To that I'll add: very valuable, producing a higher good and benefit over the long term, that has many times repeated value, and accumulates to produce the most value in total.
"If you take care of important things, the urgent things don't show up as often. The opposite is never true." (Reread that sentence. Think about it! Own it!)
[All the sentences inside the quotation marks are from Seth Godin, in his post "Deconstructing Urgent Vs. Important".]
DON'T FOOL YOURSELF...
One of the things people do is fool themselves about what is important. They think they have mastered knowing not to get stuck in living a life of urgency - yet they continue to have the highly important fall at the mercy of their continued short-term responses (reactivity), "exceptions", "emergencies", while seldom stopping to fix the source (the cause) of the urgencies and problems to be fixed. (Results are always the indicator of whether our beliefs and actions are true and effective!)
At this point, because the meaning of "important" has become obscured, I think it is necessary for us to add a new, clearer term: highly important, of the "highest value". While it may be "important" to please an authority figure or to meet an obligation, it is only "important", not "highly important". Highly important is only that which affects one's whole life significantly to raise the quality and value of life itself!
DON'T SHORTCHANGE YOURSELF IN ALL OF YOUR LIFE...
The other "fatal" thing that people do is that they fail to do the most vital thing of all, without which there can be no success (or little success). They fail to commit the time and then protect the "highest value" time "as if it were their very life" - for, indeed, it IS their very life, in terms of insuring the quality of life.
For your own highest benefit, please read the assignment, after the examples, and then do "the pledge".
OTHER EXAMPLES OF IMPORTANCE VS. URGENCY
A few more distinctions:
"A six-year-old who throws a tantrum and refuses to go to school is escalating into the urgent.
Going to school every day is important.
Mollifying an angry customer is urgent, building systems and promises that keep customers from getting angry is important.
Killing the bugs in the kitchen is urgent, putting in weatherstripping to keep them out for the long haul is important (as is avoiding carcinogens).
Fifteen years ago, Elian Gonzales was at the center of a perfect media storm. It was an urgent issue, one that involved heads of state. But it wasn't nearly as important as eventually normalizing relations and the well-being of millions of people."
However, the most important of all is assuring that your "core" is well taken care of and very effective and very happy... (See The Hierarchy Of Highest Value Activities And Dramatically Higher Payoffs.) Be clear on this or you'll get lost in terms of doing what is most valuable in an area of life and thinking that it is of the highest value, while missing what is truly of the highest value at the core of life. The rest of what is most valuable in all of the other areas combined pale in comparison to the value of first handling this essential, most important area of life. It is only AFTER you've handled this area to a high operating level that you should spend your time picking what is next of value.)
THE "ASSIGNMENT"...
If interested, CONTINUE BY LINKING to the site and scrolling back down: Important, Highly Important, And... Investing Your Gold.
I do hope that his piece will have a huge impact on your life,
Keith
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