Proactive Urgency
Work on what’s important; put out fires as needed, but focus on what’s causing the fires.
according to Yours To Do, you need to find something within your capability that is nonetheless important. This pattern helps with that.
In a normal world, it’s best to not always be reacting to fires and putting them out; when the world’s on fire, it’s best to make sure you’re putting out the most important fires.
-
In Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he emphasizes that we need to focus on quadrant II: “As long as you focus on Quadrant I, it keeps getting bigger and bigger until it dominates you. (p. 152) The results are stress, burnout and crisis management. On the other hand, focusing on Quadrant II leads to vision, balance and control.”
-
The challenge is that many of our problems are actually both important and urgent. Remember that time is your scarcest, non-renewable resource, and you are working on things that are not just important to you, they are important to all humanity. That imbues them with a certain amount of urgency. So is there a way that we can approach Quadrant I problems from a Quadrant II perspective?
-
The difference here is really about being proactive vs. reactive. You want to have urgency in a proactive sense, not a reactive “putting out fires” sense. That is what I am calling Proactive Urgency. You could think of it as treating QII problems as though they are fires that are on the verge of igniting.
Therefore:
Work on what’s really important and maintain a sense of proactive urgency about it. Where you need to, put out fires, but focus on what’s causing the fires.
Deciding what’s important is not trivial: start by determining what problem you want to solve, then create your Preferred State. From there, compare the current state to your vision to look for possible solutions. Through all of this, be aware of what is motivating your choices—Motives