The Tyranny of the Urgent

Most people live with undirected time and undirected lives as they go from one ‘emergency’ to the next. Everybody has one hundred sixty-eight hours a week.

If you do not schedule your time, then someone or something else will. Your friends will, ‘emergencies’ will, pressures will. Frenzied activities will. You will just kind of drop into anything that presents itself. You will spend your 168 hours doing something. You have ever since you were born.

Somebody else will fill your one hundred sixty-eight hours if you don’t. If you do not seize it, somebody else will. You and I, we have all done one hundred sixty-eight hours a week since the day we were born. Somebody filled that time.

If you don’t have a clear plan and focus and commitment then you will get pulled aside by whatever other people bring before you.
Their emergencies will become your emergencies. Their meeting will become your meeting. Their day off will become your (extra) day off. Those pressures are most often not connected to your destiny and calling in God.

Without an aggressive schedule you will spend your free time doing things you don’t value.
You’ll end up doing things that don’t connect your heart vision. Without an aggressive schedule and focus you’ll take your free time, night after night and weekend after weekend for years and not spend it doing things that connect your heart into your life destiny.

After 5 or 10 years we’ll look back and say “Wha Happened?” What happened was that without having an aggressive schedule and a commitment to the things that are most important to you, you got pulled in by the emergencies and worries and distractions of that day,.

Good is the enemy of best.
The devil will cheerlead you to do good if it means you cancel out doing your best.

2 Comments »

  1. 5 Lifestyle Practices for Maturity in God | The Fight Spot said:

    […] our life. If we don’t manage and focus our time we will squander our life. We will live in the tyranny of the urgent. Without an aggressive schedule we will spend time doing things that aren’t ultimately important […]

    Posted on May 7, 2007 at 1:16 pm

  2. yEn said:

    thanks for posting this one. a close friend of mine shared about this, too, just this week. i was particularly struck with the thought that if we don’t manage our time, someone else will.

    Posted on February 23, 2008 at 1:07 am

Dem's fightin' words...