Doing important-but-not-urgent things (Part 1)

Purpose:

• To acquire the awareness and habit of doing what is important but not urgent things in our life.

Applications:

• To enhance your sense of integrity because now you have more confidence to do what you promise yourself.
• Just to feel good about your being because you finally manage to embark on something that you've been thinking to do for a llooonnnnggggg time and very quickly (say, after a couple of weeks) gaining the confidence that you can actually reach the target you set for yourself.
  
• One of the key elements in effectively formalizing and actualizing a strategic plan in a corporation is to help their employees acquire the focus and habit of doing important-but-not-urgent things for the corporation. If the employees manage to acquire the habit in doing that for themselves, what would stop them from bringing that to the working environment?

Method:

• Set a ridiculously small amount of time/effort for what you want to do periodically (say, daily) so that you've absolutely no excuse for yourself of not doing it (e.g., I'll jog 1 min/day or I'll declutter my space by clearing 1 piece of something/day).
• Treat it as one of the most important and urgent things on your to-do list of the day.
• Once you meet the set target (i.e., the ridiculously small amount :-)), genuinely pat yourself on your back, smile and say, "Hey! I've done it!". Now, anything more you're going to do is a bonus.

Theory:

• The emphasis here is to very gradually strengthen your psyche muscle (i.e., from thinking of doing a routine to turning it into a habit of doing it).
  
• The design of this routine helps to bring your to-do item to the very top of your awareness yet minimizing the negative pressure of something you have to do but not exactly attracted to doing it - the ridiculously small amount of time/effort lowers the very barrier that stops you from doing it.

Request:

• I would love to hear about your feedback and even better, if I may have your permission to include your experience in the "testimonials section" below.

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