Picking meaningful over the urgent

The words of the late Stephen Covey come to mind, “How different our lives are when we really know what is deeply important to us, and keeping that picture in mind, we manage ourselves each day to be and to do what really matters most.” 

From these words of wisdom, it appears the work required of us is to attain clarity on what we want to do as well as who we want to be if we are to have a clear picture of what is meaningful to us.

In her book, It is About Time; The Art of Choosing the Meaningful Over the Urgent, my coach Valorie Burton defines meaningful as “things that are significant, relevant, important and are worth your while and time”.

From this definition, what I can deduce is that what we each define as meaningful is different. It may also mean that what is meaningful in one season may change when we move into another season. I dare to add to this definition and say that what is meaningful is also that which enables us to fulfil our purpose in each season of life. 

According to Valorie, meaningful activities tend to transcend time and will still matter in years to come.

To illustrate this point, she shares a story of her grandmother who passed away at 65 and as an 11-year-old, Valorie turned around to see a church full of people who had come to pay their last respects. 

Among the mourners were three pump attendants in their uniforms. Even at that tender age, she got an epiphany that “your life can touch individuals in such a way that even the people who pump your gas or tune your car will miss you when you are gone”. Clearly this is a woman who spent her life making choices that enabled her to focus on the meaningful over the urgent.

Unfortunately, we may not end up with a story like this grandmother unless we change some things. In today’s world, we have allowed our plates to fill up with activities which we have not sat down to evaluate and find out if they are an addition or a subtraction to the legacy we want to leave behind. 

We also allow other people to define what should be meaningful for us instead of relying on the guidance of the still small voice showing us which way to follow. Furthermore, we indulge in acquiring more things which take our time as we work more hours to pay for them. 

In addition, we must work more to make more and tell ourselves we will live life later, forgetting that time is finite and that those we hold dear may not sit around waiting for us to stop this over working.  Sendhill Mullainathan, a Harvard economist, has observed that in today’s world, there is what he calls bandwidth poverty where there is a shortage of attention due to the consistent use of our cognitive resources. 

It is when we have too much to do, our mental energy gets stretched thin and we have an attention shortage. To him, it is this type of poverty that cause stress because of the level of commitments we find ourselves in.

I humbly submit that for us all to avoid this kind of poverty and thrive by mainly focusing on meaningful activities instead of allowing the urgencies of life to guide us, we need to get back to the drawing board and answer the question, ‘what really matters to me, or to us as a family?’ 

I believe if we really do the deep work required to answer this question, we will find ourselves strengthening the muscle that will enable us to look at each activity we may wish to engage in and ask, ‘will this matter to me, or us in a year’s time?’

Rosette Wamambe is a transformational leadership coach with the Maxwell Certified Leadership Team   [email protected]