Urgent...or Important?!!

It is amazing how busy life can get and how the important things in life get crowded out by those things that seem urgent!   Many years ago I read a little pamphlet entitled “The Tyranny of the Urgent.”  The concept was how the important things in life rarely seem urgent so they often get put on the back burner and rarely, if ever, get addressed until it is too late…or almost too late.  Important things like spending time with family, addressing one’s health, planning for the future (setting goals) so that dreams do come true.  Important things like getting to know God, feeding on His Word, and learning to hear His voice.

Examples of urgent things are fixing breakfast, cleaning the house, feeding the pets/horses, balancing the checkbook, taking “advantage” of a sale or other event…even saying “yes” to requests for our time that are not in alignment with our internal goals and desires.

And yet, we do have to live in this world.  How does one keep the important things addressed without becoming completely negligent about the urgent things…or how does one address the urgent things without losing sight of the important things.

Steven Covey in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People gives this illustration.  Suppose you have a bucket and some rocks…Large rocks, pebbles and sand.   If you fill the bucket first with the sand, then pebbles and then try to put in the rocks, there is not enough room…BUT if you first put in the rocks, then the pebbles, and finally the sand, everything will fit.   The large rocks represent the most important things in your life.  The pebbles represent lesser important things and the sand represents the details and daily chores in your life.

I heard an addition to this analogy not long ago, where a teacher used this as a demonstration for her students and at the end, when the bucket seemed completely full, she added a significant amount of...chocolate milk.  When asked how that could be, the reply was, “There is always room for chocolate!”   Chocolate represents fun and beauty, in my opinion, and we all need a little more fun and beauty in our hectic lives!

I have written all this to say, I have been allowing the urgent daily things to crowd out what I really want to do and feel is important—which is write!  I have things to share about the faithfulness of God, his beautiful creation, his humor, and many other things.

I am renewing my commitment to post at least once a week.

And I am sending out a challenge…what are the important things in your life?  How can you take one step today to make them the priority that they should be?