Urgent vs. Important

Your day is a parade of urgent. A customer issue. A vendor problem. A payroll glitch.

You spend your entire day fighting fires and call it leadership. Meanwhile, the important work, the hiring, the strategy, the systems, never happens.

Urgent things scream at you. Important things sit quietly in the corner and wait.

Every fire you fight today is usually an important task you ignored last month. If you do not schedule the important work before the urgent floods in, it simply never happens. A calendar full of other people's emergencies is a business with no direction.

Take a look at last week. How much time did you actually spend on important work that was not on fire? If it is under 20 percent, you have a serious problem to fix.

Protect your time. The urgent will always find you. The important needs an invitation.

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From "The Owner's Almanac" - 90 days to build a business that runs without you. Available on Amazon.