How hard it is to tune out the urgent to focus on the important.
I struggle with this daily. Urgency fuels my anxiety, my belief in urgency. There are many things that feel urgent to me - and it seems impossible to relax unless/until I get all the urgent things done. And it seems impossible to settle in, focus on the IMPORTANT things, while there are urgent things waiting for me, screaming at me. But the urgent things are never done. Squash one and two more erupt. It’s that monster with the heads—you can’t cut one head off, two more come in its place.
So there are some fantasies at work here:
- the fantasy that I can ever “get done” with all the urgent things
- the fantasy that I’ll be able to relax, focus, in this dream state of being done with the urgent things.
- the fantasy that these things are urgent at all. They’re not, really.
It is very, very rare that a situation of actual urgency requiring immediate action happens in my life. I’m a writer, not a paramedic. Even the stuff my kids bring me is rarely urgent.
No one dies if I don’t solve this problem, answer this email, pay this bill, or make this appointment right now, right this very minute.
So I want to examine: why do I feel like they’re urgent? And how do I really assess the urgency of something? And how do I train myself not to respond in this panicky state to things unless they truly merit it? And how do I allow myself to focus and relax into deep work, important work, while these other little things are yapping at me? And why do I feel like I need to silence all the yaps before I can focus? I can’t. So I need to find a way to tune them out, to not allow them to get my attention.
