Success Principle #9 - Successful People Leave Things Undone
October 24, 2006
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I’ve been going through my RSS feeds this morning. I’ve not spent much time looking at my Bloglines lately, and after over an hour of perusing through the 150+ feed that I subscribe to I still have over 500 unread items. Then I stopped to remind myself of a question.
What is my priority here?
A guy by the name of Charles Hummel wrote Tyranny of the Urgent
We live in constant tension between the urgent and the important. The problem is that many important tasks need not be done today, or even this week… The urgent task calls for instant action. The momentary appeal of these tasks seems irresistible, and they devour our energy. With a sense of loss we recall the vital tasks we pushed aside. We realize that we have become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent.
Overcoming that tyranny of the urgent and focusing instead on those things that are truly important is one sure way to propel us on our way toward success.
Urgent things come at us from all sides. When Charles first wrote those words back in the 60’s, his big concern was the telephone. Have you ever been in a business, right in front of someone talking with them, and had them put you on “hold” while they answered a phone call? It is especially aggravating when you are looking to purchase something from them.
But how many times do we do the same thing every day?
With cell phones, email, IM, and text messaging it is way to easy for us to get distracted and pulled off course by urgent things.
The way to overcome this problem is to leave some things undone. And that is especially hard for those of us who may have perfectionist tendencies and are driven to excel. We want to get it all done.
The challenge is that, because so many of the urgent things can be completed quickly, it may seem like we are getting more done. We have more items to check off our list. However setting aside some of those urgent things, and taking the long view will pay large dividends in the end.
The irony is that we will accomplish more by attempting to do less. The key is to prioritize and set aside those things which are not as important. Put your effort into moving those long term projects a little further forward. Then you will eventually be able see success in that area.
Fourteen more new items have come into my feed reader since I started typing this. I’ll get to them eventually. Or maybe I won’t. Either way I have things that are more important today.
So do you.
Enjoy!
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Tags: Principles, priorities
I don’t know if I saw it somewhere or made it up, but when I used to say “Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.” A procrastinator’s fantasy.
The point, though worded poorly, was most things are either unimportant in the long run or don’t really need to be done and just kind of fade away. Focus on the important things.
Rick, I made the comment to a buddy of mine today, “I’m pretty deadline motivated.” He asked me if that was a polite way of saying that I procrastinate.
I think the distinction is that procrastination is putting off doing what you know you should be doing and putting off doing things that distract you from what you know you should be doing is staying focused.
Say that last sentence three times fast.:-)
But yes, I think you nail the distinction.
Rick, I gotta admit that sentence sounded clearer in my brain when I wrote it than when I now re-read it. It sort of reminds me of a verse in the Bible that I call the do-do verse.
Only I’m not as clear.
[...] Cree, at SuccessCREEations brought more than a little perspective in his post, Success Principle #9 – Successful People Leave Things Undone. The irony is that we will accomplish more by attempting to do less. The key is to prioritize and [...]
Successful people are also able ot visualize their success. Bob Probtor a reknowned philosopher talks about it in his article, available here.
personalgrowthtip.com/rights
Interesting I should come across this post while trying to figure how I’m going to get all the stuff done that needs doing before year-end.
But it’s a good reminder!
Now all I need to do is decide what’s not going to get done
Travel Guy, Working out priorities can be the hardest part. Just remember that line from the song by Rush:
Question is do you want to keep your power or let someone/something outside dictate your choices to you?