General Dwight D. Eisenhower (later President) had a couple of big jobs in his time. As Supreme Allied Commander in World War II, he was responsible for planning and executing the D-Day landings in 1944. He remarked that there were two ways to judge tasks, by how urgent they were and by how important they were. Then he drew a two by two and put ‘urgent’ on one axis and ‘important’ on the other. The tasks which should get done first are those that are both important and urgent. Next should be the tasks marked ‘important’, whether or not they’re urgent. Those that are merely urgent are in the third spot, and anything which is neither urgent nor important can be ignored. This simple graph has been a staple of productivity gurus and efficiency experts ever since. What the graph doesn’t tell you, is how lopsided these concepts actually are. It also doesn’t address the tyranny of ‘Urgent’.
Humans are ridiculous, simple creatures. We want everything placed in nice, tidy little boxes with easy-to-understand labels, all quiet and well-behaved. Anything that jumps up and makes noise is quickly branded as ‘upsetting’ or ‘urgent’ and must be dealt with immediately. We believe that chaos is unhealthy and bad – anything which is part of the chaos must be silenced. So, naturally, all sorts of random occurrences and stray noise gets branded with the label ‘Urgent’, and must be handled right away, whether or not they’re important or even relevant. In fact, many things which are truly important and even truly urgent get shuffled to the back of the line, simply because they don’t make enough noise. So, all your time and energy is wasted trying to get unimportant and trivial items to sit still and be quiet. It’s like herding cats.
Christmas has been kicking my ass this year, like it does most years, because the randomness and noise rises to a fever pitch, drowning out all the useful and important things that need to be done. I end up cranky and exhausted, trying to put out all the stupid little fires – and I invariably miss some very important items along the way. This year has been worse than most, and my writing has come to a dead stop because of it – including my blogs. I apologize for that. I will try to do better in future. I did manage to finish an edit on one manuscript (Soul Surgery), which I hope to put out for sale the first of next year, so my time was not entirely wasted.
Another tired and bruised soul swam into my view today: Danny from Sketchbook Skool, a YouTube channel I follow, was up to his eyeballs because he was obsessing over buckets of little editing details for his vlog – it was getting in the way of him actually posting anything. So, yeah – not exactly the same issue, but it felt familiar. I sent him a little moral support. By the way, if anyone reading this blog has any interest in learning to draw, improving stale art skills, or even just wondering if maybe they could figure this art stuff out – go check out Sketchbook Skool – it’s a lot of fun, educational and not at all scary. I highly recommend it. I’ll be recommending other channels I find useful in the future, so stay tuned. Anyhow, the point is, we all get sidetracked and sidelined by the excessive busy-ness we tend to push on ourselves. Happens to everybody. The trick is to find a way out of the mess we make for ourselves.
The only way I know, finally, to escape the tyranny of the urgent is to stop running madly about, sit down with pencil and paper and write out what Absolutely Has To Be Done. Once you’ve got the list under control, look more closely at the things on the list – which items are important? Which are simply urgent? How many items are neither important nor urgent, just noisy? You can probably ignore the last group. Those items will still be noisy, but you’ve got their measure now. Ignore them if you can. If not, do one or two of them after doing the important stuff. The idea is to control the details of your life – don’t let them control you. And yeah, it really is just that simple. Stop being a victim of your busy-ness. Any huge task can be conquered if you just break it down into smaller jobs and do each one in order, starting with the one right in front of you. Life is simpler than we tend to make it.
So, after stomping the loud little buggers into submission, my Christmas has become a lot more serene. Of course, it’s never going to be completely tame, but I can live with that. You see, chaos isn’t always a bad thing. Most artists need at least a little randomness and confusion, just to keep things interesting. I’m no different. As a side note, I’m in the process of re-learning a bunch of very basic lessons in making art. These were lessons I quite frankly ignored growing up, mostly because I imagined that I already knew everything I needed to know. Stupid, I know. But I finally know that I do not know – and I’m trying to correct that. Thank you, Mahlon (if you’re still out there). I finally got it. My tomorrows are now better than my yesterdays.
Happy Holidays. Be well.
bcd