Put First Things First, third habit from the book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey is still fresh in my memory. Simple message from this habit is to have a balanced existence, recognize that not doing everything that comes along is okay. All it takes is realizing that it’s all right to say no when necessary and then focus on your highest priorities. Keeping this wonderful message in mind I usually start my week or day with the ambitious goal to finish high priority urgent work first and then pick up other important tasks that are not urgent today. Great way to get things done, right! 

But here is a catch, the approach works great on getting things done today, if priority is not assigned carefully it can take time away from the investment that you want to make in a long-term perspective. With this approach, the cycle of day to day urgent tasks can take over all your daily routine and you will continue to postpone time investment needed for the long term. To create space for the long-run preparation, you have to let go of some of the things that are taking time away from your long term investment. 

To create space for the long-run preparation, you have to let go of some of the things that are taking time away from your long term investment. 

At the personal level these long-term investments may be learning a new skill, developing long term relationships with your family and friends, exercising to keep your body healthy, or just taking a break to play your favorite song on guitar to give a break to your brain. At organization level this could be a team building exercise to develop strong teams, or carving out time to investigate a new disruptive technology that is still in incubation stage, or could be simply re-energizing the team by celebrating a success on completion of a project. 

Question is how do I know the things I am ignoring are worth more than the things which are taking all my time today. It is a difficult question, especially when your daily routine is not allowing you to spend time thinking about this question. Good news is that we homo sapiens are gifted with an amazing power of imagination, we are expert in visualizing the future in our imagination. Find a few minutes to close your eyes and imagine the future next 5-10 years. What the world around you will be. Will you be feeling guilty that you didn’t play your favorite songs that you wanted to play on the guitar that has been hanging on the wall for the last few years? Would you be missing the fun time you want to spend with your kids, who will probably be in college or busy with their own life at that time? What about the work, will your company and colleagues be talking about the lack of vision because you missed seeing the next disruption that hit your business. When you are busy in preserving and building today’s wealth, incubating the future should be part of that strategy. This requires eliminating or delegating the things to carve out time for this incubation. You have to balance preservation, creation, elimination at the same time. 

A good farmer knows when is the time to sow new seeds and spend time to nurture them.

You can’t postpone building the future to the future. Of course, you need to harvest the crop from the seeds you sowed in the past, it is still ok to add fertilizer and water existing crop to continue getting the good produce. But a good farmer knows when is the time to sow new seeds and spend time to nurture them. Once the existing crop will dry out this new crop will be ready for harvesting.