How To Take On Urgent
Michael Lewis wrote The Undoing Project in 2017. In it he writes about psychologist Amos Tversky and how he handled his mail. Yes, it sounds strange. Just follow along.
On Amos’s desk “there were tidy little stacks, one for each day, each filled with requests and entreaties and demands upon Amos’s time: job offers, offers of honorary degrees, requests for interviews and lectures, requests for help with some abstruse problem, bills….each day the new mail arrived and shoved the old mail down the table. When a pile reached the end of the table Amos pushed it, unopened, off the edge into a waiting garbage can. Amos would say, ‘The nice thing about things that are urgent, is that if you wait long enough they aren’t urgent anymore.’”
Hilarious. However, a great way to handle all that we face each day. You can run around putting out every little fire, or simply focus on the big one. You can do your best in the moment or have mediocre results because you’re trying to do too much. You can say yes to everything that comes across your table or say yes to the important things and ignore the rest.
Recently, I wrote about knowing what to ignore. It’s a helpful way of looking at all the things on your table. Because you can’t do it all. Because you’re already strapped for time and wish you had more. Because you have young children, and work, and doctors appointments and weekend activities with the kids. By doing what you can and nothing else.
With time what was once urgent no longer is so. Furthermore, if it’s someone else’s urgency they’re passing it towards you. Emails or texts that come your way for a favor. Invites and other impositions.
You only have so much time. So much output. Before burn out sets in. Before the stressors of life become stress inside your mind and body. So clear your table daily. What doesn’t get done, simply doesn’t get done.
Do your best today. And put the rest in the trash. Tomorrow is another day with more stuff to do.
What are your thoughts on this blog? Comment below…
Thought Provoking Questions : What is on your table right now? What can simply be thrown away?
Daily I write and release a daily meditation. A quick read. Sharing wisdom and asking thought-provoking questions. Influenced by the obstacles, success and failures in my life and of others. Using history, books, current events, philosophy, and ancient wisdom. These writings are actionable, thought-provoking, designed to make your life better.
These writings are not to push a way of thinking on the reader or to force you into a certain philosophy or methodology. Rather to give you practical and real ways to handle life. This is an added tool. My writing is simply a discussion, a discourse, with all the material I read, watch, hear and consume.