Take a moment to mitigate the urgent

Ever since I had a history teacher who made us draw maps with lakes, mountains, cities, and boarders form memory, I've know how to tell I was going to learn from something in a way that changed me. My first reaction to those map tests was negative, but I must say -- and I know teenage me would hate this -- I must say I actually look back on those positively. I've always liked maps and diagrams of things, but I've never liked rote memory exercise. Still how else can you know the world without a bit of rote memory? But that's for another time.

I had the same feeling about the maps when I read an article my boss forwarded to me about working on the important things and not the trivial ("mitigate the urgent"). I've always tried to manage my time appropriately and pride myself on working well in environments where I have to personally determine the importance of things. So I read the article thinking it'd be in line with what I've learned, but it had something to teach me -- so I hated it... at first.

My job forces me to frequently evaluate things in terms of the bigger picture. I have a lot of input from different people and need to sort through things on my own. I feel I do well, but after reading the article and paying more attention to myself I was depressed for a few days. I felt I was working on the unimportant and yet felt I was politically forced to do so. I struggled a bit, felt very frustrated, and then the lesson sank in.

In simple terms it is always more appealing to do certain tasks that are familiar and well scoped out. The big lesson I learned was that we bias ourselves towards what we know how to do over the unfamiliar. It sounds obvious, but I know I used to rationalize this away saying to myself that I should do what I knew how to do first because it would go faster and then do the slow and new. But that has nothing at all to do with the overall importance of the task. And its rare that you have a clear case where two tasks are only differentiated by how familiar you are with the solution.

Just taking a moment for a couple weeks to quiz yourself with "is this the most important thing I could be doing" will teach you a lot. Of course there's a certain loss to productivity in doing this, so it's probably something to be reserved for a yearly or so schedule. Asking yourself is this the most important thing I could be doing is actually not the most important thing you must be doing, so balance is key.

It's been a few weeks, but I feel I learned from that article. Oh and I'd like to take a moment and blame the article for why I haven't blogged in so long. I've been mitigating the urgent... yeah... that's the ticket...