Don’t live in crisis mode!

April 28th, 2008

Crisis mode is when you are handling crisis all the time - when you just spend your days putting out fires. Most people have bills or other errands they realize they need to handle RIGHT now, people that call them with problems to handle right now, etc. If you aren’t careful (and most people aren’t) your entire day can be consumed by multiple crises. If you look at your day, how much of what you did was what you planned the day before or things that you WANTED to do that day, as opposed to urgent, pressing matters?

What can we do about it? To not be involved in OTHER people’s crises, we can adopt the “Your crisis doesn’t equal my urgency” viewpoint, (but can still calmly offer some help). For your own crises, you generally need to do some planning to stop crises from happening. It usually involves some up-front investment in time - to improve the relationship, find and implement a solution, etc. You need to practice prevention - fixing problems, instead of applying band-aids.

So stop catching the alligators and drain the swamp!

Some further resources:

http://www.lawyerslifecoach.com/articles/story_7.html

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/pick-your-urgencies.html

http://www.thinkarete.com/ideas/show/stephen-covey-quadrant-ii