Focusing on What's Important

I went to a conference and one of the keynote speakers mentioned that we should schedule our lives to be run at 40%. Why? Because life happens, and that gets moved up to 80%. The problem is we schedule ourselves to be run at 100% (I know I did the last few weeks and a 3 lb increase was the result). Look at anything that is mechanical (car, copy machine, hard drive) if they run 100% of the time they will eventually burn up and die.  So when we book ourselves solid, we are almost ensuring too much stress, too much pressure (because we have no wiggle room - we are sitting ducks if our life throws us a curve ball). ------------------ Enter Steven Covey ------------------ If you need help setting priorities, THE book you MUST read is called First Thing First by Steven Covery. It's a great book In it he point out some obvious stuff. We often jump on things that are urgent, but not important (we change our schedule so we can be home on time for "housewives"). The image below shows what to focus on: Covry Quadrants ( http://logicalloss.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/covey-quadrants-300x208.jpg ) *Important and urgent* : The homework for your class is due Friday and its a big chunk of your grade. *Urgent and not important* : The phone rings during dinner. It seems urgent. When was the last time you took a life threatening phone call? *Important but not Urgent* : Your car needs an oil change, in 3,0000 miles. *Not Urgent and Not Important:* Anything on your Roku, or Apple TV. ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00C7ETJWW/ref=as_li_tl?camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00C7ETJWW&ie=UTF8&linkCode=as2&linkId=QIWJTQKDSWA5K2NK&tag=asktpc-20 )