I think I blundered into Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits when I created yesterday’s post on urgency. I wasn’t even thinking that way when I started and I think I have to go back to Covey again and see what I can get out of it that’s new.
But meanwhile, Covey’s problem was how to get stuff done when it is Important but Not Urgent. The following chart shows what he’s talking about.
How do you get something to become urgent? Well my current way of thinking is to make it part of a process with a deadline. Once you add a deadline to something, it becomes urgent.
If you are constantly examining your list of Important but Not Urgent projects (use a process to do this) then you can create process around these things with deadlines.