One of the most useful distinctions I noted for myself in Stephen Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People was that between the urgent and the important. Whatever is urgent is something that is demanding your immediate attention — a ringing phone, a crying baby, a knock on the door, that blue light behind your car. But urgent does not equal important.  The knock on the door and that ringing phone might both herald solicitations that are of no interest to you.

Our days are often filled with urgent demands that are of small importance.  Some of them can even be reduced by forethought, such as the 5PM "what in the world are we having for dinner?" panic, which can be eliminated by advance meal-planning; or the leaving-for-Mass "where in the world are Timmy's shoes?" panic, which can be eliminated by getting all the kids' clothes organized the night before.  Some urgencies cannot be planned for and must be dealt with then and there: the sound of breaking glass and an "Uh-oh" from one of the kids or the "Honey, I think it's time to go to the hospital" from the wife or an important meeting at work. Deadlines and appointments are also urgent, so it is easy to see that many important as well as unimportant things impinge upon our days with urgency.

But where we often lose control and create problems for ourselves is with things that are important – even extremely important – but not urgent:  making a will, starting an exercise program, establishing prayer habits, long-term financial or career planning.  Urgency creates stress and a rush of adrenaline that makes us get up and take care of whatever needs attention. For the most part this is not bad stress, or distress, but the ordinary kind of stress, good stress, that propels us through our day.  It only becomes bad stress, when there is more of it than we can deal with so that it becomes overwhelming, or when it is not seen clearly as meaningful in some larger vision of life.  But important/non-urgent things, left unattended for long periods of time, do create distress.  They sit at the back of the mind and nag with a steady pulse of "You know, you really should…"  And you know you really should.  But there are so many urgent things to do that you don't seem to get around to it.

The key then to getting rid of that nagging sense of having neglected something important is to move it to urgent status: capture what it is (write it down) and as David Allen preaches, ask, "What is the next action I need to take to move this forward to the point where my brain will be able to say, 'Done'?'"  Then make it urgent by making a firm appointment to carry out the next action.  Instead of letting the urgent be the enemy of the important, make urgency work for the important.