First Things First

This episode briefly explores why many people fail to achieve their long-term goals as they unknowingly spend their precious time on unimportant matters. 

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to the show. This is your host Sayar Henry and I am back with another season of my podcast. I’m very glad that you are able to tune in today as I have a message that might help you see your days in a new perspective. But before talking about all that, I have to ask you the most important question first. How are you feeling this week? Are you okay? Are you experiencing any fever? I really hope you are safe and doing well because at the time I’m recording this episode, the Omicron variant of COVID-19 has been lurking in the shadow and attacking people of all age across the country. So please take care of yourself and your loved ones, and take all the necessary precaution without any excuse, okay?  And, even if you’re listening to this episode while you are in sickness, which I hope you are not, I want you to know that you and your loved ones will be fine. Just let go of all the worries and negative thoughts and try to relax your mind. After all, you are not alone, my friend. I am here with you. I’m right here to hang out with you again. So don’t you worry because everything will be okay. I promise.

Now, while we are talking about health, I want to give you a question to think about. When was the last time you remember to take care of your health before actually getting sick? If you are like most people and are honest with me, I’d guess that you almost never remember to take proper rest before your body breaks down. Am I right? 

Hmm … I thought so.

But the question I want you to really think about today is why it keeps happening over and over again even though we all know how much health is important to us. Why?

Well, the answer lies in the nature of our brain. You see, being a living thing, our brains are naturally wired for survival. So subconsciously, we’re always on the lookout for things that might go wrong so that we can be ready for the potential crisis. And in doing so, we happen to prioritize things in favor of urgency rather than importance. Let me explain a bit better with an example.

Let’s imagine that you have an upcoming job interview and that you’ll be interviewed by a foreigner. What would be the main concern for you for that interview? If you are like most people in Myanmar, I think one of the reasons for your anxiety before and during the interview would be the language barrier. You’d be worried about your speaking skill. You’d be worried about how well you can respond to challenging questions in English. So, under such circumstances, you’d believe that the priority is to practice English and everything else becomes secondary. As you prepare for this interview and realize that your English skill is not solid enough to boost your confidence in the few days that you have, you might even start to regret that you didn’t practice English sooner. You begin to think about all the English classes you could have attended, trainings you could have completed, and hours you should have invested, deciding you’d never repeat the same mistake of not keeping in touch with English language for a long time if you ever get this job.

But when, after all your struggle, the interview is over, you don’t feel the need to practice English anymore. You know you should keep practicing regularly and you know how important it is for your career, but the sense of urgency has gone. Your brain is now on the lookout for another ‘problem’ to fix and the only thing it finds is your desire to reward yourself for all the hard work you put in before the interview. That desire is not really an important matter, but it seems to your brain that it is something that needs to be fixed right away – something that seems urgent. So all your attention is no longer on the importance of English skill. Now, your mind is already focusing on something else. And that’s exactly why many people are stuck in this endless cycle of English language challenge.

Some of you may think this example is not true for you but as a language teacher, I have met with so many people experiencing this problem. From time to time, people would contact me and ask for help because they had some interview to go through. They would tell me how English language fluency is crucial for their professional life and they would join my classes because of that urgent need. Then, a month or two later, they would disappear from my class only to find themselves in the same situation two years later!    

This is quite a common problem among many people, which unsurprisingly is rooted in a common reason too. You see, a lot of people cannot properly differentiate between importance and urgency. More often than not, they mistakenly interpret ‘urgent’ as ‘important’. This forces them to prioritize things that demand immediate action and push other matters back. As a result, some of the most important issues that do not require immediate action never get done until it is too late. So how do we work around that?

Well, there are definitely some things we can do to deal with it. The first step is to break down all your goals and tasks into four categories like this:

(1)       important and urgent

(2)       important but not urgent

(3)       not important but urgent

(4)       and finally, not important and not urgent.

Now, if you have been paying attention well, you would have noticed by now that there are two categories that we don’t have to worry about: the first and the last. I mean, if a task is both important and urgent, people don’t ignore it or push it back. They always get it done. And if something is not important and not urgent, it is best not to pay any attention.

But the tricky part is with other two categories. We tend to give more attention and time on things that are not important but seems urgent, like solving day to day problems without looking at the big picture or our long-term goals. At the same time, we also fail to take quick action on important matters until it becomes late and urgent, such as preparing for an exam, or learning a new skill, or starting our own business.

So, as soon as you have figured out what is important to you in the long run, the next step is to start prioritizing everyday tasks in favor of importance, not urgency. And based on my experiences in the past few years, the only way you can do it effectively without jeopardizing everyday operation is to do these important-but-not-urgent tasks first thing in the morning. For example, if you feel like practicing English is truly important but you haven’t been able to make it happen, you need to do it within the first hour after you wake up. Otherwise, you won’t have another chance to do it for the rest of your day. If you think your body really needs some exercise, do it first thing in the morning or whenever you start your day. That is the only way to make sure that important things get done before you lose the remaining hours of your day to the endless urgent matters.

I hope by now you start to see how or why you haven’t been able to achieve your long-term goals, and what you can do about it. Although that is all I want you to learn from this episode, there are still some questions that you should ask yourself every day. So allow me to conclude this episode by asking you the following set of questions:

What do you think is important to your country right now?

Are you giving yourself enough time to do important matters for your country every day?

Or are you losing yourself to urgent things that are not important for your country right now?

And remember, my friend, your priorities matter to the future of your country.

So, let’s stay sharp, and get our head straight.

I’ll see you in the next one.

Goodbye for now.

–End of transcript–