Monday, 07 March 2022

What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” - Dwight Eisenhower

Dwight Eisenhower lived one of the most productive lives you can imagine. It comes with no surprise that his methods for time management have been studied by many.

He creates for us a divide between two categories – urgent tasks, and important tasks.

Urgent tasks are things that you feel like you need to react to. Emails, phone calls, texts, “the news”. Meanwhile, important tasks are things that contribute to our long-term goals.

Said another way, urgent things often distract us from important things. They attempt to pull the veil over our eyes and *seem* like the things we should be doing right now.

If we can cut the fluff – the wasted minutes – and apply those towards what actually moves us forward… we’re in for a great ride. The opposite is also true. If we get caught up in only the urgent tasks, we can go through a whole day, busy-as-ever, and feel like we got *nothing* done by its end.

Let’s take note of what we do today with a critical eye. Let’s cut the fluff.