Important vs. urgent. Many people confuse the two, but if you want to be more successful, then you need to be able to discern between them. Important items have great significance or value while urgent items require our attention immediately. Here are some examples:
Important: These are items that you need to do, but do not have to be done today, such as projects and assignments, planning, exercising, learning/training, saving for the future, etc.
Urgent: These usually have to do with grabbing your attention immediately, such as text messages, social media, doing dishes (our spouses may disagree with this one), interruptions, emails, most telephone calls, etc.
The problem arises when the urgent items seem to be important because they are pulling at us, and then we ignore all of the important items that we should have done. This is probably why many people say that they didn’t get anything done because their attention was diverted to urgent items. Even worse is when we procrastinate and make the important items both important and urgent.
What are some solutions? If an item is important, then you should set aside time either daily, weekly, or monthly to take care of it and actually put it on your calendar. Once an important item is scheduled there is a high probability it will get done. As for the urgent items, you can schedule these as well to take care of them at specified times or on a specific day. If you want to be bold then try this experiment for one week or even one month: shut off all of your alerts, emails, etc. while you are working, and designate a time to check them, say twice a day. Then, see if your productivity improves, and let me know what happens.