Most of you are familiar with the urgency x importance matrix of Stephen R. Covey's Seven Habits, one of the world's most celebrated business books.
To add a bit of detail, it is important to divide one's tasks into urgent and important, and identify how to prioritize the tasks, focusing on the important ones and being aware of how to trim or outsource the other tasks.
No matter how good this to-do management method is, it's very easy to use.
I hardly use it now, but I regulary used to do it, and I still scrape it down on paper when I get too many tasks.
(Right now, I don't use it because I've run out of things to do, and as I wrote before, I think it's preferable to design my own format, so I'll use the one I made.)
In this matrix, we are told that the "non-urgent but important things" affect our own growth. For example, studying for a certification exam is something you can always do, but it doesn't bother anyone if you don't do it.
For example, in business, it is important to devise new measures, but if there is a high probability that the current measures will be effective in the short term or in the medium to long term, there is no need to consider new measures.
Nevertheless, in business, the market can easily change, so we must make an effort to come up with new possibilities that can go beyond the current measures, at least in the medium to long term.
As I was thinking about this "important, but not urgent" thing, a thought occurred to me that is the theme of today.
That is, since the important and non-urgent points above can be envisioned as tasks at the moment, it might be better to consider "not yet known" important but non-urgent things for your own growth.
Of course, it goes without saying that the "not yet known" is included in this "important and not urgent" stuff.
But what I want to emphasize is that when you start thinking about something, you are already limited to what you can assume or have already done.
That's why I feel that I need to be able to imagine how I can do things that I haven't yet assumed.
If there can be high impact to-dos for things you haven't yet envisioned, you have to actively seek them out.
So what does it take to focus on what is "not urgent, but important and not yet known"?
It could be learning something new, or going deeper into what you know now.
I've been thinking lately that forcing my consciousness into something that I won't voluntarily notice for how long might give me an unexpected hint.
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