IMPORTANT, HIGHLY IMPORTANT, AND...
INVESTING YOUR GOLD
(This is a modified version of a post to the Blog, with more links and a few added comments.)
"Making sure that you are investing your gold into what is the most highly important things in life is the vital essential key to living the greatest life, period!"
The BuddhaKahuna
GOLDEN TIME DEFINED
Golden time is that time where you are at your highest energy, alertness, and capability. It occurs mostly, for all chronotypes, in the morning, shortly after awakening. It lasts for 4-5 hours only, but with it you can produce more than 4++ times what you do in the entire rest of the day. Those "golden hours" cannot be wasted, period! You MUST not squander them, but if you do your life will not be even close to the level of happiness and feeling good about yourself that is attained through maximal use of these highest productivity hours!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THE DISTINCTIONS
"Important means: long-term, foundational, coherent, in the interest of many, strategic, efficient, positive..."
To that I'll add: very valuable, producing a higher good and benefit over the long term, that has many times repeated value, and accumulates to produce the most value in total.
"If you take care of important things, the urgent things don't show up as often. The opposite is never true." (Reread that sentence. Think about it! Own it!)
[All the sentences inside the quotation marks are from Seth Godin, in his post "Deconstructing Urgent Vs. Important".]
DON'T FOOL YOURSELF...
One of the things people do is fool themselves about what is important. They think they have mastered knowing not to get stuck in living a life of urgency - yet they continue to have the highly important fall at the mercy of their continued short-term responses, "exceptions", "emergencies", while seldom stopping to fix the source (the cause) of the urgencies and problems to be fixed. (Results are always the indicator of whether our beliefs and actions are true and effective!)
At this point, because the meaning of "important" has become obscured, I think it is necessary for us to add a new, clearer term: highly important, of the "highest value". While it may be "important" to please an authority figure or to meet an obligation, it is only "important", not "highly important". Highly important is only that which affects one's whole life significantly to raise the quality and value of life itself!
DON'T SHORTCHANGE YOURSELF IN ALL OF YOUR LIFE...
The other "fatal" thing that people do is that they fail to do the most vital thing of all, without which there can be no success (or little success). They fail to commit the time and then protect the "highest value" time "as if it were their very life" - for, indeed, it IS their very life, in terms of insuring the quality of life.
For your own highest benefit, please read the assignment, after the examples, and then do "the pledge".
OTHER EXAMPLES OF IMPORTANCE VS. URGENCY
A few more distinctions:
"A six-year-old who throws a tantrum and refuses to go to school is escalating into the urgent.
Going to school every day is important.
Mollifying an angry customer is urgent, building systems and promises that keep customers from getting angry is important.
Killing the bugs in the kitchen is urgent, putting in weatherstripping to keep them out for the long haul is important (as is avoiding carcinogens).
Fifteen years ago, Elian Gonzales was at the center of a perfect media storm. It was an urgent issue, one that involved heads of state. But it wasn't nearly as important as eventually normalizing relations and the well-being of millions of people."
However, the most important of all is assuring that your "core" is well taken care of and very effective and very happy... (See The Hierarchy Of Highest Value Activities And Dramatically Higher Payoffs.) Be clear on this or you'll get lost in terms of doing what is most valuable in an area of life and thinking that it is of the highest value, while missing what is truly of the highest value at the core of life. The rest of what is most valuable in all of the other areas combined pale in comparison to the value of first handling this essential, most important area of life. It is only AFTER you've handled this area to a high operating level that you should spend your time picking what is next of value.)
THE "ASSIGNMENT"...
If I were your accepted coach, the assignment from this would be:
1. Increase your "committed" (and scheduled in) time by at least several hours a week. (If it is massively important, and needed, to "catch up" in learning and implementing what is vital in life, the amount of time should be increased to 10 to 20 hours a week, depending on how urgent it is to have life running so well that there is no, or little, urgency nor negative ongoing emotions any more!)
2. Make up any lost and/or interrupted time by committing to shifting your time to another slot if the original committed time is interrupted for any reason. There should be no more than 2 weeks a year that you don't meet the number of needed committed hours goal (not counting of course the weeks that you are on a vacation, where the purpose is rejuvenation and enjoyment).
3. To identify and have a list of the highest value items you can do, in order and reviewed and commented upon by your coach/partner, and how to decide how many hours a week they are worth committing to (by category). Review the list at least weekly and/or use it as you are doing your schedule for the day or week. Discuss "the foolers" that look like they are important but are not truly "highly important" for one's life in total.
4. To identify the hours in which you are most capable of doing focused, deeper "thinking", "figuring out", learning in terms of putting things into effective order and truly understood AND assuring they will be followed up on, any deep studying, and such. And then you'd commit, as below, to matching those hours with the type of work you do during those gold hours.
5. To commit to totally minimizing the spending of any gold on anything that is less than of golden value except one, of course, must do the "necessaries" (bathroom, water, eating, whatever is necessary to start the day).
The "two minute rule" ("if something takes less than two minutes to do, do it right then") is suspended and should not be used at all (it is resumed right after you finish your gold hours - however, if you are in any focused committed time block, the rule is always to just note the to do on a piece of paper, to do right after the time block). No email (except for a quick scan to see if anything is urgent, but with ZERO processing or prioritizing at the time, spending no more than about a minute). No activity that you could have set up the day or evening before (setting up and making the coffee, your breakfast, etc.). No news or newspapers (or limited to no more than 10 minutes; best if put off into later in the day, as it is extremely low value!). No organizing or cleaning up one's desk (it should be done the day before! See The Complete Day Wrap Up.) No errands, no multitasking (no commitment of any portion of your brain to anything else) - start the laundry after the gold hours, clean up after the gold hours, no logistical/clerical work at all until after the golden hours) It should however include you day's "Launch" into power for the day and it should include the time to assure one is in a higher state of resourcefulness (energy, etc.) AND operating in the H-Zone. The time is to be honored as "pure gold" and spent to purchase what is of pure gold, long lasting and of the highest value. Allow no interruptions, as continuous time in needed for the greatest progress; interruptions and "shifting attention" or task has a huge cost.
6. (For those who are willing to step it up even more) To expedite and put in extra time until your highest life values have been achieved at the base level necessary for a great life: to have examined and corrected all major beliefs that have caused poor results and/or bad emotions. Along the way, it is good, but only AFTER you have done you belief correcting for the day, you would correct and maximize all your important systems that you need to operate well in life, in order of value: any time you notice something going wrong, you immediately look at and devise a way to correct it, such as sleep, eating, time management, relationship problems, work barriers, and such).
(Use the list above as if it is a checklist of what to do - and then don't stop until you have checked them all off!)
THE PLEDGE (TO YOURSELF)
And, for all people regardless of how reliable they are or not, you will commit to "do your best" and to "sincerely honor" your commitment to investing your hours and your gold at the highest possible level for creating a great life - and to do it in writing that is shared with all high stakeholders (your coach, your "partner"). (If the languaging of this is too confrontive for you, then modify it to the highest level at which you can handle it at your current power level in life. But don't, please, do what the losers do: not write down any commitment - those who lose out in life go to zero (no commitment in writing) instead of going to a 70, 80, or 90 (out of a 100) level, where they will at least produce more in life than at their current lower level!
WHAT TO DO WITH THIS...
Print this out and put it on your wall (and/or in your daily reading in your Reminders Notebook) until you have reached the point of honoring it in your life (which means at least utilizing the gold and committing the time). Set it up thereafter to review either weekly or monthly, forever... (of course, tickling it to assure followup).
[Click on the following link to take you to a site page with this piece on it, but with more links for clarity and/or for what to do from here: Important, Highly Important - And Investing Your Gold. (Note that those who get "rich" in terms of life, do the same as those who get rich in money: they "invest" for the long term, instead of "spending" more than is necessary for the less valuable or focusing on the short term as an immature child might. As they invest more and more, and well, into the most solid investments, their lives compound exponentially for the better, for a massively greater sum total value that allows massively greater freedom and massively more happiness, as your confidence soars and your fears plummet!)]
