Everyday we look at our “To Do” list and it never seems to get smaller. It grows by the day. We try to prioritize our list. Everyone has hundreds of methods they’ve tried. And yet the problem persists. Maybe we are doing what Seth Godin points out:
Most of what we do at work all day is one of these three.
Fun: It’s engaging, it gives us satisfaction, people smile.
Urgent: Someone else (or perhaps we) decided that this paper is on fire and it has to be extinguished before anything else happens.
Fear-based: Most common of all, the things we do to protect ourselves from the fear we’d have to sit with if we didn’t do them.
Not on this list: important.
A day spent doing important work is rare indeed. Precious, too.”
Wow, important work! Think about that one. Are the things on your list impacting others, are you making a difference? As I write this I can’t help but think of the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland Florida. The pride they must feel for doing the work they know is IMPORTANT. Mrs. Douglas would have been proud.