Habit 3: Put First Things First

This blog title has been in my “drafts” folder for a month now, so I guess I’ll just write on it and get it out of the way.  I was work­ing on it that Wednes­day morn­ing, four weeks ago today, when I took a short break from writ­ing to clear my head.  Every time I’ve logged into Word­Press since then, it’s been sit­ting there, mock­ing me, but I refused to delete it.  The text is all gone, just the title left, but heck, let’s get the next of Stephen Covey’s habits out of the way.  Hon­estly, I’m not very cap­ti­vated by the topic at the moment, but it does have real usefulness.

“Put first things first” is pretty self-explanatory.  Do what’s impor­tant, and don’t allow that to get pushed down your pri­or­ity list.  To illus­trate how peo­ple should pri­or­i­tize, there’s a nifty grid with four quad­rants.  Activ­i­ties are cat­e­go­rized in terms of impor­tance and urgency.  Quad­rant 1 is Urgent and Impor­tant. Cri­sis falls squarely in this cat­e­gory, but so do dead­lines or other nor­mal busy­busy times.   Impor­tant but Not Urgent lies in Quad 2.  Health, rela­tion­ships, men­tal well-being all fall under this cat­e­gory.  Quad­rant 3 is the realm of the Unim­por­tant, but Urgent.  Things that scream to be done now, but really aren’t all that impor­tant, take up a lot of time.  And of course, Quad­rant 4 is those things that fall under the head­ings Unim­por­tant and Not Urgent.  Friv­o­lity, time wasters, et cetera fall into this category.

Alright, now that I’m done with all that Irri­tat­ing Upper­cas­ing, I should per­son­al­ize it instead of sim­ply sum­ma­riz­ing the chapter.

My June and early July were nearly con­stantly in Quad­rant 1. It was hor­ri­ble, but obvi­ously, that was sit­u­a­tional.  Churn­ing and burn­ing and doing what needs to get done now under pres­sure has its joys, in the right sit­u­a­tion.  Still, it’s an exhaust­ing place to stay for long peri­ods of time.  The pre­ven­tion for that is to spend more time in Quad­rant 2. Some­times men­tal or phys­i­cal health is neglected because it’s not urgent.  Usu­ally it’s not a deathly sit­u­a­tion when that Quad­rant 2 issue moves to Quad­rant 1, but as my past month has illus­trated, it eas­ily can become so.  Quad­rants 3 and 4 are really often just wastes of time, so I’ll just say that tak­ing the time to iden­tify what is unim­por­tant really is the biggest step. What is impor­tant to one per­son is friv­o­lous to the next.  If an activity’s only accom­plish­ment is that min­utes have passed, then that time would have been bet­ter spent in doing some­thing more important.

Please note, decom­press­ing and recre­ation are impor­tant, by the way.  Some peo­ple wouldn’t count fun as impor­tant.  They’re mak­ing a ter­ri­ble mis­take.  It’s very easy to see when life is bleak just how laugh­ter and joy make us whole people.

The most vital thing I take from this is learn­ing to iden­tify what is impor­tant, and to always remem­ber that urgency is a sep­a­rate issue.  Triag­ing time accord­ing to urgency ends up short­chang­ing many truly cru­cial issues.  Far too many peo­ple let their own per­sonal sit­u­a­tions slide while they take care of “what needs doing.”  I’m very guilty of that, myself.  I’ve been try­ing to remem­ber that I’m never going to have time for my health, my career, or other per­sonal goals if I keep wait­ing for some “me time” wrapped up in a pretty box with a bow.  Time is going to con­tinue to move even if I don’t use it to exer­cise, tell peo­ple I love them, fol­low my dreams, or take care of myself.

In related news, I’m going to my first ever sup­port group tomor­row, for Sur­vivors of Sui­cide.  I’m pretty ner­vous, but also anx­ious to do some­thing proac­tive for myself.  Wish me luck!