Making Time for the Important (Blog)

[Savage]

Use this thread to discuss the following entry from Steve Pavlina's blog:

Making Time for the Important

[norbert]

Great article. I'd add: make it a habit to schedule time with yourself.

[Akashic_Librarian]

Yeha Steve thats good. That will satiate those SR nay-sayers for a while...

[JohnK]

Excellent! I've been doing some of that, and I need to do more.

In your Related Posts, I'd add the article about Triage.

JK

[XeutonMojukai]

I've realized, more and more, just how incredibly fortunate I've been in my life thus far... This blog really showed me even moreso...

Since I was very little, I've put my needs above everything else, no matter how urgent, unless something was absolutely urgent.

As a result, my life is very eventful, exciting, and meaningful, and when things truly are urgent in a necessarily important way to me, I'm able to take command of the situation much, much more effectively.

As a 19-year-old, it's taken me the from ages 4-15 to really master this. But as soon as I mastered it, my spiritual life, social life, and enjoyment of life in general skyrocketed.

Now, I can remember an entire book in one reading. I can access my spiritual and psychic abilities incredibly easily, and I am able to multitask more effectively, and not just for the sake of productivity.

I also am more confident in my own importance as a person. Instead of wondering how I'll make money, I'm wondering how I'll make history.

This is, in my opinion and experience, Steve's most valuable blog yet.

~ David

[Kazeko]

How to train this valuable skill? Any tips?

As for me, it's very easy to schedule a personal appointment, to think - yes, people can wait, to get my time - and do nothing with it. Nothing valuable, I mean.

It's also easy to slip back to urgent tasks after a while.

So, how can I use Steve's advice and improve this situation?

By the way, Steve, how did you use that 10 hours of your time, you got from sacrificing that assignment? Was it worth it?

[Max Power]

Originally Posted by Akashic_Librarian

Yeha Steve thats good. That will satiate those SR nay-sayers for a while...

AL, I don't read Steve's articles much, why do you reference SR?

Max

[napieed]

Another excellent article by Steve. Many of you may be familiar with Covey's time management matrix; it provides a visual depiction of what Steve describes. You can see an example here: Time Management Matrix

[bigadam]

Really enjoyed this. Usually the high urgency items bring far less value to your business than the important and less urgent priorities. another "Aha" moment from Steve.

[WanderingOak]

While you did get out of writing that paper, imagine what could have happened if you had designed and coded the 'Minority Report' interface fourteen years ago...

[Andrew Brunelle]

Well, I just read this entry and I do believe that you should always focus on what is important and use that five-year test he suggested. However, in the moment, if you live completely in the present, and you shift your perspective from now to five years from now, you completely lose your sense of present for those moments. But putting things in perspective often helps me quite a bit, no matter how big the perspective is. If the world was hit with a meteor, we could all say, "Well, from the perspective of the physical universe, it's just a very small bump in the road."

I believe before we can focus on the important we have to decide for ourselves what is important to begin with. We all have dreams and aspirations, and we all have survival needs. But we need to find the things that are truly important to us before we can evaluate each situation. To me, it is doing the things I enjoy, those that bring me closest to joy, inner peace, and compassion/unconditional love.