Urgent vs. Important

Many years ago in a job interview I was told by a member of the Board of Directors of the company that he would rather hire someone who worked smart than just worked hard.  He said, "I can find plenty of hard workers, but it is hard to find workers who know how to effectively manage their time and who work on the right things."

Those words have stuck with me through the years.  I have always tried to work smart at whatever the task.

Don't misunderstand, I have always worked hard too, but I have found that if I invest the time to think through things and to identify those things that are most important -- i.e. to work smart -- I am not only more effective, but I get more done.  Age and experience have helped with that too.  Through the years I have tried and failed enough times that I can apply that "learned wisdom" to the tasks I face now.  Prioritizing is something of an art form because if done well, many tasks go away simply because they no longer are required.

Again, as I mentioned in a previous post about planning, I am thinking of the Franklin-Covey Time Management advice to identify what is "important" and what is "urgent."  I always thought about these two things differently prior to being introduced to their system.  These two definitions are key to being more effective.

Items identified as "urgent" are those that seem to be "in your face," "deal-with-me-now" things that pop up during the day.  An example would be a flat tire.  It obviously must be handled immediately.  It is an "urgent" item.  On the other hand, an "important" item that might prevent the frequency of the "urgent" items occurring is to replace the worn out tires with new ones.

That is the difference between the two.  The "important" things are what you can do that helps everything to run more smoothly long-term.  They tend to eliminate many of the "urgent" things from popping up.

If you devote -- set aside -- some time every day to focus on the "important" things, over time, your life becomes less stressful and better manageable because many of the "urgent" items stop popping up to ruin your day.  It frees even more time to work on what is truly important.

This, at its heart, is the difference between "working smart" and "working hard."  You can work hard all day long, day-after-day on the "urgent" things that seem to continually be happening and never truly make progress, or you can spend time each day addressing the larger, systemic, "important" issues that can eliminate many of those problems from ever being an issue.  Work smart and work hard, but work hard on the things that will make the bigger difference.