{"id":286175,"date":"2025-06-10T17:04:54","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T17:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/the-curse-of-the-eternally-urgent\/"},"modified":"2025-06-10T17:04:54","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T17:04:54","slug":"the-curse-of-the-eternally-urgent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=286175","title":{"rendered":"The Curse of the Eternally Urgent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"post-22869\">\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/DA5.jpg\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-18985 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/gettingthingsdone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/DA5.jpg\" alt=\"David Allen on GTD and Teams\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\"\/><\/a>Ignoring next actions on secondarily important actions and projects because you are too busy and concerned with urgent things fosters continual crisis management. It never self-corrects\u2014it self-perpetuates. Where do fires and crises come from? Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment. Then, ignored, they cause the next fires and crises.<\/p>\n<p>Someone heard second hand about my two-minute rule (if the action on something takes less than two minutes, do it as soon as you look at or think of it) and thought it was ineffective. \u201cI\u2019d waste my whole day doing 2-minute things, many of which are not that important.\u201d My retort was: if they\u2019re not important enough to do, they\u2019re not important enough to do at all! You\u2019re either going to do something or you\u2019re not. If you\u2019re going to do it at all, and it takes less than two minutes, 95% of the time you\u2019ll save time and be much more proactive if you do it immediately. (Many big and important projects have a two-minute-or-less next action on them too, by the way.)<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m not talking about ignoring priorities. I am talking about capturing, deciding, and organizing action steps about everything we have our attention on, big and little. Little, ldquo;unimportant\u201d things too often demand much more attention later on than they deserve, and become too \u201cimportant\u201d because they weren\u2019t handled when they would have been easy. And many of them can be handled very efficiently in the little weird windows of time we get in odd situations and circumstances. My \u201ctotal life to-do list\u201d, with me all the time, provides me with lots of options to maximize my productivity wherever and whenever. It creates much more smooth sailing through the mundane day-to-dayness of life. It breaks the cycle of the eternally urgent.<\/p>\n<p>A crisis should be a crisis. Urgent things should be urgent. And they should be exceptional.<\/p>\n<p>[Note: This essay appeared in David Allen\u2019s Productive Living Newsletter. <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/UWZKr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Subscribe for free here<\/a>.]<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .entry-content --><\/p>\n<p>\t<!-- .entry-footer --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ignoring next actions on secondarily important actions and projects because you are too busy and concerned with urgent things fosters continual crisis management. It never self-corrects\u2014it self-perpetuates. Where do fires and crises come from? Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment. Then, ignored, they cause [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":286176,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116510,2,116511,116512],"tags":[29701,116513,28460],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-286175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-david-allen","category-featured","category-free-resources","category-productivity-tips","tag-curse","tag-eternally","tag-urgent"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Curse of the Eternally Urgent - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=286175\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Curse of the Eternally Urgent - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ignoring next actions on secondarily important actions and projects because you are too busy and concerned with urgent things fosters continual crisis management. 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