A Quote by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Never let something important become urgent
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You must distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. You could accomplish all of the urgent things that you desire without accomplishing anything that is important.
The important task rarely must be done today, or even this week...But the urgent task calls for instant action...The momentary appeal of these tasks seems irresistible and important, and they devour our energy. But in the light of time's perspective, their deceptive prominence fades; with a sense of loss we recall the vital tasks we pushed aside. We realize we've become slaves to the tyranny of the urgent.
Don't let the urgent take the place of the important in your life... When you and I were putting out the fires of the urgent, the important was again left in a holding pattern.
I am fortunate to have a very helpful team that enables me to spend time doing things that are important but not necessarily urgent. People who have no such team need to also make these larger decisions so that they can cheerfully say No to that which is urgent but not important.
So silently, peacefully, without hurry, without any tension, without any anguish, move into yourself instantly. It is urgent. Unless meditation becomes urgent to you, it will never happen; you will die before it. Put meditation on your laundry list as the most important, urgent... number one. But meditation in your life is just at the very end of your laundry list - and the laundry list goes on becoming bigger and bigger. And before you finish your laundry list, you are finished, so the time for meditation never comes.
I stay balanced by remembering to prioritize. What is most important should never be railroaded by the "tyranny of the urgent."
Any email that contains the words 'important' or 'urgent' never are, and annoy me to the point of not replying out of principle.
I have the distinct feeling that when I'm old, and I look back on my life, my thirties will be one huge blur. There's a lot that gets neglected: exercise, dishes, laundry, my poor garden. I try to prioritize the important but non-urgent things over the unimportant but urgent things.
Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the apparent and urgent things in your life, it is probably to the most fundamental, highly important things.
I think that sense of surprise, that you don't know where something is going, or what's going to happen, even as you write, that you're making it up as you go along - that's important to me. It's not a question of shock or surprise in a gimmicky way. It's that as you read, you become more deeply into something and into what happens, and become more involved and engaged, you're learning something or you're appreciating something or seeing something differently - that's what's surprising.
I really don't have anything urgent to say, and I think you shouldn't write unless you have something urgent to say. Sometimes that troubles me, and sometimes I don't really care.
The best advice I ever received is that there is a difference between urgency and importance: Urgent tasks seem important, but they're not. Important things need to get done.
Desire is something very egoistic. If you desire something, you also have to take the consequences of that. You have to study the market and see how it can go. I mean to become an artist... You never get the Nobel-price for example. You can normally never become a millionaire. Very few become millionaires, so the circumstances are very bad if one becomes an artist. And that should be taken into consideration.
Because, as we all know, it’s easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it’s also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we’re not so sure about.
Do what is important, not what is urgent.
Whether or not you can never become great at something, you can always become better at it. Don't ever forget that! And don’t say “I’ll never be good”. You can become better! and one day you’ll wake up and you’ll find out how good you actually became.
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