Don’t let the urgent crowd out the important. But also, don’t measure too closely.
If you always let the urgent win, you’ll never get to your important values. There’s always something urgent. But if you never take care of the urgent items, you’re going to drop a lot of balls, disappoint a lot of people, and end up with a lot of dishes in the sink.
The trick is to step back. Did I focus enough time on the important things this week? This month? This school year?
When I get mired down in doing urgent things, I can feel like I’m failing at this metric. But when I step back and take in the whole picture, I’m satisfied that I’m balancing it about as well as I can.