What does priority mean? If something's a priority, how should you treat it differently from something that's not a priority? Well, originally, priority meant how urgent it was. It's based on the word prior, which means doing something before something else, which is basically a measure of urgency. But recently, priority has come to mean how important something is. "My children are my number-one priority." No, they aren't. They aren't urgent. You don't have to rush out of here right now and see them. However important they are, they are probably not urgent. So the word priority has become a rather messy mixture of urgent and important, to the point where it's almost useless. In fact, next time someone says "This job is a priority," you should ask them, "Do you mean it's urgent or do you mean it's important?" Of course, they'll probably say both. And the answer to that is to ask, "So, do you want it straight away as a rush job, "or do you want me to plan it in for later "and do it properly?" If you let them confuse importance and urgency, if you get confused between the two, then your time planning will be all wrong. You'll end up doing things in the wrong order and not allocating the right amount of time to the important things. If you think about it, these two things, urgency and importance, are not necessarily connected at all. Something can be important but not urgent, like planning your 10-year strategy. And something can be urgent but not important, like dealing with an interruption. The result of urgency should be when you do it, and the result of importance should be how long you spend on it. I'll just say that again, it's so important. The result of urgency should be when you do it, and the result of importance should be how long you spend on it. And I want to stress that importance isn't about whether you do it. There are lots of trivial things you have to do, like buying food. Of course you have to do it, but the question is, do you want to spend lots of time on it? Just because ironing has to be done, surely that doesn't mean it's important. Filling up your car with petrol's the same. You have to do it, but spend the minimum time on it. Just get it done in the most efficient way. Now, one more example, buying Christmas presents. Is it urgent and is it important? Well, depending on when you view this video, it may or may not be urgent, and we can measure that urgency in days to go. It's a fact. It's the same for all of us. It's a fixed thing that comes from outside of us. And the urgency of buying those Christmas presents gradually increases for all of us as we approach the dreaded Christmas Day. Importance, on the other hand, is completely different. First, it's a matter of opinion. It's different for all of us depending on whether we care about it. Second, it comes from within us rather than from outside. And third, it doesn't change over time. Although the buying of presents gets more urgent as the weeks go by, it remains important or trivial, according to our opinion, right up till the last moment. What are the urgent but trivial tasks that are taking up too much of your time, and what are the important things that you really should make some space for? So the key is to separate out importance and urgency in your mind. Things that are urgent are probably not important, so don't let them take up too much of your day. And things that are important are often not urgent, so there's a need to make sure they don't get ignored and put off and never done.
