Tag Urgent

The Absolute Unimportance of…Almost Everything 

Steve Keating 6 Comments

A former colleague of mine used to get himself worked up over the littlest things. But just when you thought he was about to blow his top he would stop, take a breath, and say out loud, “Well, the heck with it, this won’t matter in a hundred years so why worry about it now.” 

After hearing him say that about 100 times it got me to thinking what exactly will matter 100 years from now. The answer I came up with was “almost nothing.” I mean that seriously, unless I find a cure for cancer or discover life on a planet in a distant solar system most anything I do today will be long forgotten in 100 years. 

I mean this seriously too…do not take what you do too seriously. Most of us are not that big of a deal. Most of what we do is just not very important. 

Most people would disagree with that because they confuse urgent things with the important things in life. A former United States President, Dwight Eisenhower once said he had two kinds of problems, urgent and important. About those problems he said, “The urgent are not important and the important are never urgent. 

Too many people spend their time on the urgent things of life. They do so at the expense of the important things of life. If you’re not sure of the difference let me tell you how I look at it. 

Important things are activities that have an outcome that leads to us achieving our goals, whether these are personal or professional. Urgent activities are those things that we think demand immediate attention. They are usually associated with achieving someone else’s goals.  They are often the ones we concentrate on and give immediate attention to because the consequences of not handling them can be immediate. 

The most successful people have a longer view of life. They balance the important with the urgent much more effectively than less successful people. Of course one of the reasons less successful people struggle in this area is because they lack formal goals to guide them in their decision making. 

Few things in life I can guarantee more than this…if you lack real goals in life then you will spend your life helping people who do have real goals achieve theirs. 

So here’s a few of questions I’d encourage you to ask yourself on a very regular basis. How much will what I’m about to do matter in 30 days? How much will it matter in a year? How much will it matter in five years? 

Then act accordingly.

Let me give you one little example that my wife taught me many years ago. You have company coming over. The company are some friends from work. Your two toddlers have made a mess of the house. You HAVE to get the house cleaned up before the company arrives. Your kids WANT you to read them a story.

Which one is urgent and which one is important? Which one will matter down the road? When you change jobs in a few years you may not ever see those work friends again. But you’ll never get those 30 minutes of story time back again. 

The mess in the house will wait. The kids will not. 

I am always fully aware of the absolute unimportance of almost everything I do. That in no way makes me less important as a person. It in no way demeans what I do. It does allow me to have better balance in my life. It allows me to consciously make decisions to at times sacrifice the important for the urgent. But I know I’m doing it and I know why. 

I know for a fact that this post won’t matter in 100 years. But I hope it matters to someone today and I hope for your sake, that someone is you. 

What Do You Mean…Urgent?

Steve Keating Leave a comment

ur·gent 

Function: adjective 

1 a : calling for immediate attention : PRESSING <urgent appeals> b : conveying a sense of urgency

2 : urging insistently : IMPORTUNATE

– ur·gent·ly adverb

     

Well, here is the definition from Webster’s.  I think I like the first one, but the second one isn’t too bad either.

     

I guess it really doesn’t really matter which one you prefer as long as you have one of these definitions that you can embrace as your own. 

     

Now when I say embrace I mean EMBRACE!  Really latch on to it and live the meaning of urgent, live it through your words and actions every single day.  I remember attending a Dale Carnegie™ Sales Conference about 25 years ago when one of the presenters was asked about his opinion on the most serious threat facing professional salespeople at the time.  I think his answer applies as much today as it did at the time: a lack of urgency. 

     

He believed, and I agree, that salespeople who go about their business as though a deal could wait another day are doomed to a career filled with limited successes and missed opportunities. 

     

Salespeople who lack a sense of urgency, whether it’s urgency regarding following up on a request for information, urgency to return a phone call, urgency to make that one additional sales call a day and urgency to do the things they know would make a difference, are what I call woulda, coulda, shoulda salespeople.  These are the salespeople who lament the poor business climate and challenging customers that the salespeople with a sense of urgency pursue, maximizing the market and reaping the rewards.

     

Which one are you?  Do you have that sense of urgency?  Or, do you “leave a little business for tomorrow?”  If you’re a woulda, coulda, shoulda salesperson, you had better hope your competition is too!  As of the date of this post there are only 27 or 28 selling days (depends on if you work December 26th) left in 2017. Will you press on with urgency or will you coast into 2018?

     

That’s not a question about your ability, that’s a question about your attitude. Successful people know that a fast start is important but the most successful people know that how well you finish what you started is the real key to continual success. 

The Importance of Leadership

Steve Keating 3 Comments

If you’re an Authentic Leader then you know that leadership is about people. You understand that things are managed and people are led. 

 

Not all managers are also tasked with leading people but nearly all, or more likely absolutely all, leaders are also tasked with some management responsibility. 

 

And that’s a problem. 

 

It’s a problem because the management “stuff” almost always comes with deadlines. Quarter end, year-end inventory, budget preparation for the upcoming year, planning, bill paying, payroll, you name it, when it comes to managing it HAS to be done and it has to be done on time.

 

But leading seldom has deadlines. You’ll always have people and it is easy to let people wait. You can always recognize somebody later. “Someday” is the perfect time to coach or mentor a rising star in your organization. There’s always tomorrow in the world of leadership but I challenge you to find later, someday or tomorrow on your calendar. 

 

Virtually every leader I’ve ever asked has told me that their people are their greatest asset but follow them around for a week and you would be certain that statement was false. You’d be certain it was false because all the management stuff seems to be a priority while the leadership responsibilities and activities all seem to be optional.

 

The fact is the management stuff is urgent while the leadership behavior is merely important and in the fast-paced, competitive environment where most of us work urgent almost always trumps important.

 

But here’s the thing, the best, most effective leaders don’t let the urgent win. They literally schedule leadership activities in their calendar. They set aside time to interact with their people. They block out time on their calendars to get out from behind their desks and go into the workplace where their people are. They make it a point to provide frequent and meaningful recognition.

 

Authentic Leaders know that you can’t lead people without being involved and interacting with them. They understand that you can’t lead people you don’t care about and you can’t show you care about them until you know them.  


Be an Authentic Leader. Never let the urgent “things” overtake the absolute importance of truly leading the people who are ultimately responsible for your success and the success of your organization. 

The Difference Between Urgent and Important

Steve Keating 1 Comment

In my last post I discussed the fact that leaders understand the difference between need to do and nice to do activities.

Effective leaders also understand the huge difference between what’s merely urgent and what’s truly important. Those urgent things are frequently less productive, and often matter far less, than the important things. 

President Eisenhower said, “The urgent is seldom important and the important is seldom urgent.” That statement led Charles Hummel to publish a small booklet in the 1960’s entitled, The Tyranny of the Urgent. 

In it, he described the tension that exists between the urgent and important things in life and the fact that far too often, the urgent wins. Sometimes the urgent things are also important but very often they are not.

So what about you? Are you running around doing urgent things all day or are the things you do truly important? If you’re like most people, yes sadly most people get caught in the trap of urgency, you’re in such a rush to “get it done” that you don’t really stop to separate, or prioritize the urgent things from the important things. 

What’s more important, a conversation about school, life or their choice of friends with your kids or an empty email inbox? The emails may be urgent but the kids are important, for most of us, our kids are by far the most important aspect of our lives. Yet we stay at the office that extra hour to try and “get through a few more emails” while our kids, those incredibly, unbelievably, positively, absolutely important kids are waiting at home. 

If that happens to you then you are a victim of the tyranny of the urgent. 

If that happens to you then I’ll also bet you just use that always popular time excuse. You think that saying “I just don’t have the time” let’s you off the hook. You’re not responsible, it’s not your fault, it’s just “stuff” getting in the way of you doing what’s really important. 

Wrong! 

You’re not going to like hearing this but the fact is, you don’t suffer from a lack of time, you suffer from a lack of prioritization skills. Or, you just never slow down enough to truly prioritize. The challenge for many of us is that we just don’t often invest the time to consider what really matters to us, we just rush through life doing what’s put in front of us without considering what’s left behind.

I understand that you likely can’t get everything done that you would like to; that’s just a fact of life in the world in which most of us live. But that’s not an excuse for not prioritizing, it’s the very reason you should. 

At some point you’re just going to have to stop the madness, shut down the distractions and make yourself ignore the “urgent” stuff long enough to truly consider what’s important in your life. Just stop once in a while to determine if you’re running your life or if your life is running you. 

You may not be able to get it all done but you sure as heck can get the truly important stuff done, you just have to be aware of what’s really important in your life. 

 

What Do You Mean, Urgent?

Steve Keating 3 Comments

ur·gent 

Function: adjective 

1 a : calling for immediate attention : PRESSING <urgent appeals> b : conveying a sense of urgency

2 : urging insistently : IMPORTUNATE

– ur·gent·ly adverb

Well, there is the definition from Webster’s.  I think I like the first one, but the second one isn’t too bad either.

I guess it really doesn’t really matter which one we prefer as long as we have one of these definitions that we can embrace as our own. 

Now when I say embrace I mean EMBRACE!  Really latch on to it and live the meaning of urgent, live it through our words and actions every single day.  I remember attending a Dale Carnegie™ Sales Conference about 18 years ago when one of the presenters was asked about his opinion on the most serious threat facing professional salespeople at the time.  I think his answer applies more today than it did at the time: a lack of urgency. 

He believes, and I agree, that salespeople who go about their business as though a deal could wait another day are doomed to a career filled with limited successes and missed opportunities. 

Some salespeople lack a sense of urgency, urgency regarding following up on a request for information, urgency to return a phone call, urgency to make that one additional sales call a day and urgency to do the things they know would make a difference. These are the woulda, coulda, shoulda salespeople. They lament the poor business climate which the salespeople with a sense of urgency attack, maximizing the market and reaping the rewards.

Which one are you?  Do you have that sense of urgency?  Or, do you “leave a little business for tomorrow?”  If you’re a woulda, coulda, shoulda, you better hope your competition is too!  As of August 1st, there are barely 100 sales days left in 2013. You best get a move on. 

Now, go help a customer reach their goals and sell something, it’s urgent!