Stephen Covey first taught me this distinction and it's an important one, the essence of which I'd like to pass along:
The urgent is that which calls for our attention. It's the ringing phone, the email, the postal mail, the meetings. It's the things we "have" to give our attention to. It's getting caught, as he says, "in the thick of thin things."
The important is that which can usually or often be put off. It's the planning, the foresight, the care and maintenance of relationships, the big project that we've been postponing.
If we put our attention on the important, it grows. If we put our attention on the urgent, it grows and we can find ourselves putting out fires all the time. Thus the trick is to take care of the truly urgent while gradually putting more and more time and attention on the important.
The larger principle is that whatever we put our attention on expands. The plant we water is the plant that grows.
This comprehensive principle of attention is neutral, like electricity. It can work either positively or negatively. For example, if we put our attention on how rotten the world is, we'll gather more and more evidence and experience to prove our point of view. To us, it will look more and more that way.
Conversely, the heart that looks at the world in gratitude finds more and more things to be grateful for. What we put our attention on expands.
So if we put most of our attention on the urgent, we get more of it. We get more and more things that need our urgent attention. It occupies more of our life, and seems to need to. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
When we deliberately put some of our attention on the important, on that which we know is primal and vital long-term, we get more of that. The important things in our life then grow in strength and power, and we find that the urgent gradually recedes.
In the dimension where we appear to be separate beings making choices, we can say that our destiny is determined by where we put our attention each day.
—jim sloman, summer 2000 for Jun 24
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