Urgency

How do I develop a greater sense of urgency?

I'm one of the least urgent people I know. Most things I deal with are things I will do, but there is no particular sense of needing to do them "right now". Occasionally something - usually an emergency - falls into this category, at which point everything is dropped and the issue is resolved - and then everything goes back to normal.

There are probably a number of things which need to have "Gazelle Intensity" (as Dave Ramsey says) in my life, yet more often than not I tend to be laid back about them - perhaps to the point of being lazy?

Why no sense of urgency? Part of it is due to the fact that often resolving urgent issues involves confrontation, something I typically do not enjoy. Another factor is that I have spent too much of my life dealing with the urgent, only to see the outcome of it - which more often than not is simply that my urgent "project" at best made no difference, at worst was a complete waste of time.

But not to be discounted is also this question of what qualifies as urgent - too often, those things that I do define as urgent are not, while those things that I tend to be laid back about are. That is an issue of values and time management, not an issue with urgency itself.

So how do I develop a sense of urgency - about the right things?