I ChooseSampel

I Choose Important Over Urgent

What are the most important things in life?

When you hear that question, I imagine some things easily come to mind: God, family, making a valuable contribution to the world, just to name a few. We could all form a list pretty quickly—but how often do our lists align with the way we spend our time?

Imagine you’re leaving for a road trip you’ve been dreaming of for years. The trip will take approximately 15 hours, and you’re ready and excited. Eventually, after driving all 15 hours, you realize you went east instead of west and ended up not only in the wrong place but a lot further from the right place. The destination was important to you, but you got distracted and missed some critical direction.

This is a rare road trip story, but it’s a common life story. We know where we should be going, but we’re so distracted by what’s immediately in front of us that we miss the exits and onramps to get on the right road. We choose to act on the urgent and indefinitely displace the important.

Now is the best time to take action to fight the urge to chase distractions. Maybe it’s time to cut back or take a break from social media. It’s always a good time to get up in the morning to read God’s Word. Maybe you need to tell your co-workers that your family comes first, so you’re going to make clearer boundaries between work and life. Maybe it’s how you spend money that needs to change or how you’re investing in relationships. Whatever it is, make the important urgent again, and do something now to make a change.

Act: What important thing is getting too little of your attention? What urgent (but not important) thing is getting too much of your attention? What steps do you need to take to flip it?

Jordan Wiseman, marketing at YouVersion

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