Reading Time: 2 minutesIt’s my fault. Of course. In my opinion, it’s very hard to define what is important and urgent; important, but not urgent; urgent, but not important; and not urgent and not important. It’s super hard.
Every day I try to have fewer meetings. They are important, but in my opinion they are also overrated. That’s why I try to make them as short and straight to the point. In one of these meetings, I noticed that in every two minutes I was checking my iPad.
But, why? Because there were nonstop notifications of apps and I simply couldn’t stop looking to see what was happening. And damn, I got upset with myself! My meeting was already short and I was more focused on the notifications.
I realized then that I fell into my own trap and I didn’t define what was important and urgent; important, but not urgent; urgent, but not important; and not urgent and not important.
Notifications and urgency
Notifications create a feeling of urgency around something that ends up not being important. In fact, I don’t need to know immediately that someone retweeted my tweet. I started noticing that, that a minimal alteration (such as a retweet) would have a huge impact on me.
“There are two types of people: One strives to control his environment, the other strives not to let his environment control him. I like to control my environment.” George Carlin
The thing that pleases me the most is that, by turning off all notifications, I am the one that decides when to check my e-mail, Twitter, LinkedIn, Quora, etc. And all that happens, happens because of me. And that may seem weird, but I love this feeling.
Receiving notifications were my fault, and by controlling this part of my environment, all becomes clearer. And now that this is on me, I can work on myself, get better and check these notifications a lot less.
I highly recommend you to try it.
#Founder, #Author, #Speaker, #Advisor and #Runner. Ah... And arrogant. Breaking world with @AngryVentures
