Thanks Merlin. Another great post. This is real black-belt stuff, although, as usual, it didn’t occur to me until someone pointed it out. It’s a constant source of amazment how we fall so quickly into thinking “priority is equivalent to context”, when it’s just one facet of context. I guess it’s a product of the on-demand capitalist paradigm that we inhabit. We’re all urged to “Do more, with less, faster”.

Hugh has already mentioned the Tyranny of the Urgent and I think that this was a concept developed by Covey (not sure though). I try (and I stress try) to look at each incoming request in the light of “How ‘really’ urgent is this?”, but it’s hard to do when every third or fourth e-mail has one of those little red exclamation mark flags on it (Thanks Outlook.). You have to remember that just because someone else thinks it’s urgent, it might not be for you. I know, easier said than done if the e-mail’s from the VP.

Merlin’s correct in prompting us to look at factors other than priority when considering contexts of NA’s. I wish I did it more often. One place I do it that I wish I could apply to other areas of my life is in the car on the motorway. Imagine, you’re in the outside lane, overtaking a lorry (truck) that is overtaking a column of other lorries in the inside lane. As you’re doing this (at 70 m.p.h. officer!) some half-witted idiot invariably screams up behind you and stays soooo close, you could reach out of your own back window and touch his (for it is invariably a he) car. Do you pull in immediately and succumb to the Tyranny of the (his) Urgent? Not if you want to stay alive and unmaimed, I hope.

No. Rather, other factors come into the context of the situation to determine your next action. If it were me, I wait until I’ve passed the lorry and pull in applying the Rule of Thumb (another excellent Merlin post) “Pull in only when you can see the other car’s headlights in your rear-view mirror” rule. That way, you don’t kill yourself, and the guy you’ve just overtaken and damn the idiot who wants you to pull over NOW because what he’s doing is more urgent than what you’re doing. Granted, the crocodile part of my brain usually mutters “I’ll pull over when I’m ready”, but that’s just human nature on an ovecrowded road network.

OK, dumb example, but it lends weight to Merlin’s contention that priority is one facet of context for NA’s and it’s not ‘Hippy New-Age’, it’s about staying alive on the road.

Some things are urgent, but less than (other) people would have you believe and the world will still be there in the morning. I guess that we should try to view urgency as just one of the facets of context rather than the main, or exclusive facet. Thanks again to Merlin for pointing this out.

I’m rambling now, so I’ll shut up. Just to say that this is a really fascinating notion that has lots of related ideas that subconciously affect our everyday lives… It strikes me that there are patterns and anti-patterns in this subject.

Apologies for the long post.