How to keep your Priority first?

The fact is that not everything that is urgent is necessarily important and this is where many individuals go off track. For instance, you may be at home feeding your child who just got up from a long nap and in the middle of that, the telephone rings. The impulse is to answer the telephone simply because it's ringing; the ringing makes it urgent but is it really more important than feeding your hungry child? Of course, it's not. The thing is though that many people would pause the feeding and answer the telephone which is a natural impulse that comes from our conditioning.

It still befuddles me how often I am in a meeting where the person I am meeting with continuously answers the telephone each time it rings. This is because it seems urgent, BUT, is it necessarily important - could it have waited? Of course, it could have. There's a good reason voicemail was invented.

The first rule is then to list your priorities in order of importance, not urgency. There is a clear difference between the two so think about it before you prioritize. The order of importance can take many forms and contexts.