Happy Friday!

Urgency emergency

Do you ever feel so overwhelmed by the urgent work in your life that you just throw your hands in the air and give up? Or so frazzled by it that you can’t focus on anything? Or so anxious in the pit of your stomach that even the thought of sitting down at your desk is repulsive?

I don’t have that problem…

Nope, not me, not even once…

I have literally never been so frustrated with the urgent pile of stuff that I desperately need to get done that, instead of working, I plop on the couch and binge The Witcher on Netflix.

(…okay, maybe I have done that, but in my defense, one of the cast members of The Witcher is a good friend of mine!)

How does urgent stuff pile up? We know it’s an issue and we don’t like the way it feels, so why do we let work keep sneaking up on us and overwhelming us?

Eisenhower power

Because you subscribe to this newsletter about upgrading your productivity, the odds are pretty good you’ve heard of the Eisenhower Matrix. While I don’t use the actual matrix in my day-to-day productivity, it’s a useful tool for understanding importance versus urgency.

An Eisenhower Matrix has four boxes aligned along two axes—one axis for importance and the other for urgency. Here’s how the boxes work:

• Box One, in the upper left, contains work that is both urgent and important.
• Box Two, the upper right, contains work that is important but not urgent.
• Box Three, lower left, is urgent but not important.
• Box Four, lower right, is neither important nor urgent.

Most of us live at the bleeding edge of urgency, trapped in Boxes One and Three.

Being stuck in Box One means we have allowed work that is important to become urgent as well. We didn’t engage with the work soon enough, so now the situation is desperate.

Being stuck in Box Three means we have fallen victim to the Urgency Illusion—either we are using urgent as a stand-in for important, or we’re treating non-urgent work as urgent because we’re afraid we’ll forget it if we don’t do it right away.

Where we want to live is Box Two. If we spend most of our time there, important work will rarely become urgent, and we won’t unintentionally mistake urgency for importance.

💡 Conquer the Urgency Illusion 💡

👆 That’s your weekend upgrade.

When we break down the issues that get us stuck in Boxes One and Three, we can identify three solutions to conquer the Urgency Illusion and draw our attention back into Box Two:

(1) Capture ideas in a reliable Inbox.

(2) Keep an eye on the horizon.

(3) Define Priorities.

How can Tools for Thought help?

If you’re new to the Weekend Upgrade newsletter, I explore how processes can be created in Tools for Thought (TfTs). TfTs are apps optimized for linking your ideas, thoughts, notes, etc.—apps like Roam Research, Amplenote, Logseq, Obsidian, and Craft.

Because there are three parts to this week’s upgrade, I’ll individually discuss how TfTs can help within each section below.

Capture your ideas in a reliable Inbox

“I’ll do that now so I don’t forget about it.” – You, probably

I attribute that quote to you because I am willing to bet you’ve thought those words. We’ve all done things right now because we’re afraid we’ll forget them otherwise.

The problem is, it’s dangerous to create urgency where none exists. Even a brief interruption can derail the rhythm of your work. And, worse, your days can quickly turn into a steady stream of (seemingly) urgent, unrelated tasks. That kind of chaos is rarely productive.

What’s the solution? Instead of doing the task now, capture it now and process it later. This minimizes the work interruption and makes it much easier to return to your previous work after you’ve captured the new idea.

Capture can be surprisingly tricky. Depending where you are, who you’re with, what you’re doing, etc., you may need different tools to help you capture ideas. I use Roam, Todoist, Drafts, Otter, and Dropbox for my various requirements. As David Allen says, “Have as many Inboxes as you need.”

The key to successful capture is this: you have to process all your Inboxes consistently and reliably. If you know you’re going to process ideas later, putting them in an Inbox will feel much more comfortable than “doing them now so you don’t forget.”

(One caveat: Don’t have too many Inboxes, or you won’t want process them. Hence the rest of David Allen’s quote: “…but as few [Inboxes] as you can get by with.”)

To keep the process reliable, I use my TfT of choice, Roam Research, as a spine for my Inbox processing. Within Roam, I use the tag #Inbox. But I also have an Inbox processing checklist, complete with links, that guides me through Todoist, Drafts, and the rest of my Inboxes to ensure everything I captured is processed into my system.

Because my Inbox capture and processing workflow is reliable, the only time I do something “so I won’t forget it” is if I know it needs to be finished before the next time I’ll process my Inboxes—which of course means it genuinely is urgent.

It takes only a few minutes each day, but it’s well worth it to keep from falling for this particular version of the Urgency Illusion. I can stay focused on the important work in Box Two and not slip into the chaos of Box Three.

Keep your eye on the horizon

At some point each week—maybe as part of a weekly review—look forward in your calendar at least two weeks. (Depending how much lead time you need for your work, you might need to look as far ahead as four weeks.)

If you recognize any important projects associated with your upcoming appointments, make sure you’ve accounted for them in your system and that their tasks will surface for you so you can start work at an appropriate time. Also look at the projects already housed in your system to verify that their tasks will show up when you need them and not at the last minute (or never!).

I use two approaches in my TfT implementation to keep my eye on the horizon.

(1) I use a #@next tag combined with a context tag (#@office, #@home, etc.) to identify the actions that will move projects forward. Being rigorous with assigning and reviewing next actions ensures I can chip away at big projects over time and avoid doing it all at the last minute.

(2) I set start dates for projects that are on the backburner so I know when to focus on them. That can be as simple as a task: e.g., “[ ] Initialize and start work on such-and-such project [[July 5th, 2022]]”. When that day arrives, I set up the project and get going. This is particularly powerful when paired with recurring projects, because you can often generate the entire task list up front.

If you do this consistently, you engage upcoming work while it is still in Box Two. If instead you ignore a project until it’s within two or three days of its deadline, you now have a Box One problem instead of a Box Two opportunity.

Define your Priorities

In our quest to pursue important work, nothing is more fundamental than the question “what is important?”. In the absence of a clear definition, urgency will become our stand-in for importance. After all, if I don’t understand what’s important to me, asking myself “what can I do today that would no longer be available tomorrow” is a reasonable shortcut.

But if you do that, over time urgency will become conflated with importance. Unless you clearly understand “important,” urgent will always win out, and that’s why you need to define your Priorities.

When I use the word “Priorities,” I mean roughly what other systems call “Areas of Responsibility.” I prefer “Priorities” because it’s a more loaded word. I want to associate “important” with “what I truly want to do.”

My personal Priorities are these: Family, Coaching & Courses, Personal & Professional Development, Creative Work, Music Work, and Church Work. You may have more or fewer. Though be careful not to have too many—if everything is a priority, then nothing is.

Priorities make great project categories, which creates a useful heuristic for when you’re considering potential projects: if a project doesn’t fit under one of your Priorities, should you take it on? Granted, sometimes you have to regardless, but it’s a good gauge of which projects serve your long-term goals.

Every six to twelve months, I use journaling prompts in my TfT to review my Priorities. Have they changed? Do I need more? Do I need to eliminate one? I ask myself questions like these:

• Who are the most important people in my life? Why?
• What are the most fulfilling things I do in my life? What is fulfilling about them?
• What areas of my life, if I let go of them, would I miss desperately?
• What areas of my life, if I let go of them, would be a huge relief?

Once I’ve clarified my Priorities by responding to these questions (and more), I wrap each Priority in [[double brackets]]. Then I use references to them throughout my TfT to help myself stay focused on important work. I use them to organize my projects; to consider monthly, quarterly, and annual goals; and to periodically “audit” my work to make sure I’m heading in the right direction.

Having your Priorities clear means you can more readily identify what belongs in Box Two. And that means you’re less likely to fall for the illusion of “urgent = important” that so often traps us in Box Three.

What do I do next?

(1) Take 2 minutes and answer this question: What’s one thing I learned in this newsletter that I can put into practice right away?

By committing to a specific action, you make it much more likely you’ll do it.

(2) Audit your capture processes.

Make sure you always know how to get an idea into your system.

(3) Begin to define your Priorities.

Until you know what’s important, it’s hard to focus on what’s important!

(Note: If you’d like help with capture processes or defining Priorities, check out the P.S. at the bottom of this newsletter. I’m launching a free productivity community!)

If this was valuable for you:

Share the newsletter with someone you think would also get value from it! https://rjn.st/weekend-upgrade-newsletters​

Until next time, friends:

Focus on what’s important and the urgent won’t be able to sneak up on you anymore!

R.J.

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P.S. I just launched my new “Make It Happen” online productivity community. It’s powered by Circle and totally free. If you ever find yourself overwhelmed or unable to focus on work that’s important to you, join the community! You can share your productivity challenges and get feedback from me and others in the community. You can learn from the tips I’ll share regularly. And you can receive coaching at the Live Coaching Zooms I host once or twice a month. All for free. https://rjn.st/join-free-make-it-happen-community​

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