False Urgency

You’re pushing to get it all done again, aren’t you?

Yeah… it’s mid-year and there are tons of reasons (or excuses) why you’re pushing so hard.  There’s all that stuff that has been on your “to-do” list. There’s all that stuff that’s looming on your calendar.  

And all of it is important, isn’t it?

It IS important, isn’t it?  

Okay, so there’s the important stuff.  And there’s the urgent stuff. And what we’ve been taught is that we need to handle the urgent right now whether it’s important or not.

The problem is that everything starts to look urgent.  Everything.

Even the unimportant becomes urgent.

And you live your life running from task to task to task to… you get the picture.  You’ve been living it and you forgot to take a breath or two.

So here’s the challenge for your Wednesdays With Wayne:
It’s a couple of action steps.  Do these and you’ll be thanking yourself for the focus and time that you’re restoring to your life:

• Take a look at your calendar.
• Take a longer look at your to-do list.
• Now decide.

The hardest part of the process is to decide to take some things OFF of your to-do list and OUT of your calendar.  

ALL of feels important.  And…
only some of it really is important right now.

Challenge Part II – Pick Six!

Pick just six items on your list you’ll do today.  No more. Just six.
This is practice for the next week or so.  See what happens today when you accomplish six things.  

You’ll want to push for more.
Don’t.

This is not an anti-performance message.  Quite the contrary. This is a message of High Performance.  

How can doing less make you a higher performer?  You practice focusing on the really important and begin to discern out the less so.  By doing this, you extinguish the flames of the urgent. The false urgency you put into your own schedule makes you less productive.  

Do you need deadlines?  Yes! Keep them. I’m a fan of deadlines.  There’s great research on this topic area, in fact.  And that said, does everything need to be cast as urgent?  Nope!

In order to be effective in actually accomplishing what needs to be completed, you need to free up time for both mental and physical rejuvenation.  The adage of “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” will get you your wish sooner than you’d like. And you know what? YOU are too important for that.

New offerings are available for you at www.WaynePernell.com

Check out my most recent #1 Best Seller (Leadership Lessons From The Road; Why Bother, We’re All Nuckin’ Futz!) and look around at the courses available to you.  

I think you’ll appreciate my Success & Significance course.  

Let me know your progress (or where you need help)!

See you here next week!
Until then… Keep Making Your Magic™

~ Dr P ~