Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Today I want to talk about a lesson that was passed on to me by a particularly difficult college professor. That is, assessing and determining what is urgent and what is important, and letting those assessments drive our task prioritization.
First let’s talk definitions, we need to understand what the differences are before we can make any assessments. Urgent, means something that requires immediate action, while important means something has significance or value. There is some great intersectionality between these two concepts, as well as some important differences. Tasks can be both urgent and important, but can also be urgent and unimportant. Likewise, tasks can be both important and urgent, or can be important but not urgent.
This was the situation I found myself in the other morning, being forced to assess tasks and prioritize their order based on urgency and importance. Let me set the stage for you.
It was business as usual giving my wife some well deserved extra winks in the morning and everything was as calm as two kids in quarantine can get… Until it wasn’t. I had a mostly calm infant in my arms, a rambunctious toddler playing at my feet, my pants around my ankles, and things moving along normally with my morning constitutional.
Then comes that dreaded moment where the water containing your quarantine carb heavy log starts rising instead of falling. Like a shark smelling blood in the water, my infant Speedy picked up on my apprehension immediately, and responded with cries matching my mood. Not to be outdone by his little brother, El Duderino (the toddler playing with his match box cars at my feet) decided to add his hat in the ring for my attention, needing one of his cars fixed.
The first step in this equation is assessment, what is urgent, and needs immediate action, and what is important? (And remember the brown tide is rising). It’s hard to say that your children crying isn’t important, and as pilots we are taught to “silence the horn” before dealing with the emergency. So my general inclination in most situations is to calm them down to a noise level where I can think clearly. Brown tide rising and me one handed, is not most situations though.
So the kids crying is important, but not really urgent, they will survive crying for a few more minutes while I try to stave of the poopocalypse. Task prioritization is pretty much handled now, the troublesome toilet both requires immediate attention, and while not life or death, is pretty important if I don’t want to spend the rest of my morning dealing with a crappy commode and a funky floor.
Thankfully, in the brief moments it took to do that mental math, the water stopped it’s ascent, still below the bowl level. Now with some breathing room I was able to think about steps moving forward. Do I try to use the bidet sprayer over the tub still one handed with an infant in arms with a less stable seating? Do I pull up the pants and pray for a clean no-wiper? Do I attempt one handed plunging with a full bowl?
As time slowed to a crawl and my task prioritization began to materialize (one handed bidet spray over the tub with infant in arms, put Speedy down, educate El Duderino on the full bowl plunging technique) the slurry gurgled down the drain after it’s perilous perch near the top without any intervention. And, while I was saved any of the heavy lifting, I was grateful for the mental walkthrough, however anxiety inducing and blood pressure boosting it was.
All said and done the water level was raised for about 90 very stressful and perilous seconds. Being able to identify, assess, and prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance, helped me turn the situation from what could have been a week 10 quarantine emotional breakdown, to something I can share with all of you as a learning moment or at least a good laugh.
Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.
