When the Urgent Must Rule

I try to live the majority of my life by the motto, "Don't let the urgent drown out the important."  

Life moves fast.  Something is always due next, and it is easy to get into a pattern of thinking about only the next deadline and letting the things that matter in life get past you before you realize it happened.  I believe in meeting deadlines, but I also know that sometimes you have to stop and have an important conversation with a student.  

I handle this balance in most of my life by planning well.  If I have allocated my time properly, I am less likely to get into a situation where the thing that is due in a few minutes has been worked on at all.  I make a lot of lists and estimate the time each thing on the list will take and prioritize the items by either importance, urgency, or doing the quick things first so that I get a lot of things off the list quickly.

No matter how good your planning, there are times when things pile up.  Some things are simply out of your control.  And it is okay during those times to let the urgent rule.  It is not a way to live your live, but it may be the way you have to get through a week or two.  I find myself in that situation this week.  Because of our virtual return from Christmas break, I changed the order of the chapters in my 8th-grade curriculum this year, making their NASA paper deadline 2 weeks later.  I also had to tweak the timing of my physics class' free choice project presentations, so their grading is going to overlap this week.  This weekend is also the final deadline for my yearbook staff.  All three of my preps are finishing their major projects within days of each other.  

So for the next two weeks, I'll be focused on those three things.  That doesn't mean I won't have important conversations, but it does mean that I won't engage in long-range planning or reflective thinking until these three things are done.  I'll be using my planning time to work on these three things until they are finished.  

I think it is okay to do this for two weeks as long as it only lasts for two weeks.  What is not okay is to fall into this pattern as a lifestyle because without appropriate boundaries, your life will spiral out of your control.  There are times, however, in all of our lives where the motto simply must be "Do the next thing" for a little while.