During the years I was in the work force, I participated in the human rat race. I often rushed around, thinking that certain tasks simply had to be done immediately, right then and there.
When I worked as an administrative assistant to an attorney he would tell me, “This absolutely has to go out today.” It frequently meant my staying late to finish the assignment, dropping it in the building’s mailbox on my way out.
Our law office was one of the first three business tenants in a newly constructed office building. For over two weeks, those of us working in the building each day dutifully placed our outgoing mail into the official U.S. Postal Service box on the first floor.
Then my co-worker received an overdue notice from the electric company for her personal apartment. She was certain that she had mailed the utility a check two weeks before – from our building. She investigated and learned that no one managing the brand-new office building had notified the post office that several businesses inside were up and running. We had been putting our mail into that mailbox and the mail had just been sitting there, never being picked up.
Here's the kicker. Until that gal received her overdue notice, not one of our law firm's clients – no one in any office anywhere – had ever called to say “I was expecting a document from you and haven’t received it yet.” Not one! I felt like the joke was on us.
The experience got me thinking about the word “urgent.” All those letters and documents my employer had considered urgent turned out to not be urgent at all! There had been no genuine need for me to stay late all those nights. Or for us to pay the extra postage to cover overnight or two-day service which we usually used because, well, the client “needed it.”
So, false urgency? How many other things in life that we consider urgent may not be? Is the joke on us more than we imagine?
And what’s the difference between the urgent and the important anyway? Charles E. Hummel wrote a classic little book called “Tyranny of the Urgent” which you may find helpful in thinking about these things and setting your priorities accordingly.
The six of us in that law office were able to laugh off our little mailbox fiasco. But the joke won’t be so funny if years go by and we repeatedly choose to do what we think is urgent only to wake up one day and ask ourselves the following question: “Why have I left so many truly important things undone? I meant to do them. What filled up all my time? Uh-oh. What if it was all that stuff I treated as urgent!”
For example, someone may ask himself later in life “What if I too often chose finishing reports at the office over having dinner at home with my spouse?” Another may wonder “What if I ignored my daughter’s frequent pleas to play a game with her just because I wanted to tackle a home repair that could easily have waited with no adverse effects?”
Yes, I understand that certain things in life, of course, are legitimately urgent – but maybe not as many as we think.
Something to at least ponder.
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