Do you know the difference between urgent and important?
One of the many tools introduced in the Martial Art of Management’s Time Management Lesson is categorizing and quantifying tasks as urgent or important. This technique is extremely useful because people have their own perceptions of urgent and important tasks.
Perception is the way people decipher and comprehend the world. This deciphering consists of how our brains extrapolate information from sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch and correlate it with our experiences, beliefs, and biases.
For Example:
The two men in this image are deciphering their own perceptions of the same number. Which number is correct ...6 or 9?
The result is our perception of the world; however, Ninjitsu Martial Artists are trained to understand three types of reality:
1. Your Reality
2. Their Reality
3. Martial Reality
Martial Reality is void of theoretical ideas and misguided perceptions. Martial Reality is the actual state of all matter, space, and time based on empirical laws authenticated through observations and experiences. Martial Artists consistently test their perceptions against Martial Reality to improve their understanding of reality.
For this reason, it is imperative always to quantify the terms as urgent and important. A simple quantifiable formula to use is:
Urgent = A task that must be completed within 24 hours.
Important = A task that must be completed within five days.
To properly apply this technique in the workplace, it is highly recommended to integrate the water element in your response strategy. The water element focuses on your creativity and redirects the flow of thought.
For Example:
Your Boss- “I need you to complete an urgent task.”
You- “No problem. When do you need this task completed?”
Your boss's response will determine if this task is urgent or important. The Time Management Lesson provides a more in-depth explanation of this process and other Time Management strategies.
By clarifying these terms, business professionals are more capable of improving and developing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that can collect operational knowledge instead of file cabinet dust.
If the SOPs in your organization need to be revised, improved, or purged, submit a Standard Operating Procedure inquiry by clicking on this inquiry button, and one of our consultants will respond back to you within 24 hours:
By: Dr. David Jackson
April 9, 2022
© Copyright 2022 Aiki-Karate: The Martial Art of Management
Clarifying Business Terms
Commonly Used Interchangeably
(Part 2)
