So here I sit in my living room reflecting on my own political beliefs and morals. The fact that I am a bit of a news junkie. I love learning, reading, and following the news.I don't really care about the latest antics of some Hollywood personality, or who is going to get picked first in the next draft. I do, however, want to know what is going on the political sphere, especially where it concerns my family's constitutional rights and the future of the United States as a free society. I do that by reading news feeds, and watching documentaries from as many sources as I can. I want to make decisions based on the best information available. For whom should I vote? What companies/services should I use/avoid? These and other decisions need to be made with good information. Information that I do not believe is reliably available by simply watching Fox, CNN, or MSNBC. I do not believe that I can get this information by simply reading one newspaper, website, or blog. So I have assembled a small collection of sources which I believe report reliably on issues about which I care.
The other thing that is important to me is prioritizing my time. And recently I have found myself losing sight of some of that. A few years ago I read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. My main takeaway was the importance/urgency matrix. It looks a bit like this:
Lately it seems that everything is urgent, and not all of it is important. Sure, some of these things can overlap. Building/maintaining relationships for example can involve social media. Procrastination can allow things to shift from the not urgent to the urgent category. I have more and more allowed myself to be drawn into the "urgent, but not important" category. Some of these tasks are subjectively placed into a quadrant. It can be difficult to decide and sometimes agree upon what goes where. I remember my parents had a sign which read, "A lack of planning on your part, does not constitute an emergency on mine." While something may be important to you, it may not be important to someone else. Therefore, it is often necessary to complete this sort of task before it becomes urgent. Likewise, we should not let others impose their ideals on us. We cannot be held accountable if they did not plan and now have an urgent matter which, while important to them, is of little or no importance to us.
This book helped me change the way I organized my life. I realized that much of what I was doing was not really all that important. I had to do a better job at prioritizing. For me, that means putting my own family and goals first. I often allow myself to get drawn in by things which are urgent, but important to others, and not to me. It is part of what inspired me to go back to school. That was something which had been important to me for some time, but I had put it off because it did not seem urgent. It is also one of the reasons I stopped spending much time on social media. I still pop into Facebook or Google+ occasionally either to post pictures or see what is going on. I do this though because I want to maintain those personal connections, not because I am looking for an excuse to avoid something else. I was once a great procrastinator. No longer, but I do still take some time on the weekend to rest, relax, and be unproductive on purpose. In the end, each one of us has to decide what is important and prioritize based on that.
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