Thoughts on Effectiveness and HopeĀ 

I’ve long been a devote of Steven Covey. To this day, I try to keep his principles in mind. 

One of the central elements is the importance: urgency grid. 

The upper right grid is the key place: but urgent and important. Urgent and important grab priority, followed by urgent and not important. Not important and not urgent tend to grab our time, too. The realm of time wasting. 

Many people cycle between the urgents and time wasting. The not urgent important gets neglected. 

That’s the realm of Hope. This painful cycle minimizes hope; it doesn’t get fed. 

No wonder we swirl about in anger so much. Why we focus on win-lose, why we’re so afraid. 

We never feed hope. 

Overactive Mind

I’m getting a lot done, but accomplishing very little. I don’t find it satisfying. I enjoy checking off to-dos, but without direction it’s, ultimately, empty. Way too many directions in my life. I need focus.

Examples: the hundreds of email news sources I subscribe to. And the dozen, or more, tasks I load into a day. That’s a weakness in the electronic-tools age. Keeping those emails to read “later” is so easy. Or just shuffle those tasks to another day. Then I get to a point where I have several hundred emails waiting to be read. Or I’m spending 15 minutes moving my collection of overdue tasks to today. It all creates a sensation of “spinning my wheels”.

I’m tacking this, slowly, carefully. First, I’m now aggressively deleting email. And also unsubscribing. For things I’ve been subscribed to for years, I feel discomfort. But with so many I haven’t even opened in years, it’s just time. Time to accept that, though I see the value, I don’t feel the value. And give myself permission to feel that. Also, I’m culling tasks. Some have lingered for months, even years. My mind is telling me something here. Time to listen.

The next step for me requires stepping back, reprioritizing and focusing. I know it will be painful. Selecting that which I won’t do; ugh. I want to do everything. I see, though, I can’t do even half of everything well. Quality is important. Much more so than quantity. Time to embrace it, and live it.

Perhaps I’ll embrace an agile approach. Re-evaluate every few weeks/months. Ensuring I’m meeting my needs; watching for those needs to change. I like that idea. Allowing my life to flow, fluid-like. Accepting my needs will change, and seeking to be ahead. Rather than waiting until I swirl into misery. There’s zen.