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.  

Allowing the Urgent to Rule - This Week

A few years ago, I wrote on this blog about how you can avoid being ruled by the tyranny of the urgent.   By that, I mean living your life in a way that you are always chasing the next due date at the expense of things that are important but not time sensitive.  Today, I am writing about a time when I am allowing myself to let the urgent rule.  It's this week.

For those that don't already know, I am the yearbook advisor at my school as well as a regular classroom teacher.  That means May is packed enough to make a person go cuckoo for cocoa puffs.  The final chapters must be taught while exams are being written; awards nights are scheduled as are spring fine arts performances.  Textbooks must be collected and inventory must be done.  AP testing pulls students from my classroom.  Yearbooks go out less than two weeks before graduation (for which I make the slideshow).  And, oh yeah, someone decided both teacher appreciation week and Mother's Day should be during this time.  So . . . There's a lot going on.

For that reason, this is one of the periods during the year when I allow myself to be ruled by that which is due soonest.   My "to do" list gets divided into three sections - "Today, By the End of the Week, and Can Wait."  I will complete the "Today" section before I allow myself to look at the other two.  Then, I will tackle either whatever takes the least amount of time (like writing this blog post) or what I can do a small part of even though the whole takes a long time (like completing a few slides of the graduation slide show). 

This is not easy for a planner like me, and it might not be for you either.  I was having a conversation yesterday with someone who claims to live her life this way all the time.  That would make me crazy.  However, during these few weeks, I give myself permission to live this way, knowing that it will be over soon.  After exams are finished, I can go back to prioritizing the important over the urgent.