The Smallest Urgency

You have to produce a large amount of revenue by the end of the month, or else.
A client just sent back a large list of changes, just before the deadline.
An enormous bill came in from the cloud hosting company.

These are some big urgencies.

You told yourself you’ll be creating a new creative project by the end of the weekend.
There’s an important message you have to tell your teammate. It’ll be a difficult one to deliver.
You promised you’d be playing a new game with your son this week, and it’s Friday night, and you’re exhausted.

These are some smaller urgencies.

Despite their difference in size, I bet all those urgencies feel equally draining.

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What’s interesting is this: the tricks to deal with them are the same too.

Carve out a bit of time to see clearly. Rewrite your view of the available options. Take a decided step toward the first possible action. Repeat until the whole urgency has passed.

The larger trick is that it pays to have practice. When the large urgencies come up, you deal with them better if you have practice with some smaller urgencies.

And having a creative practice gives you frequent urgencies to compose with. That’s just good practice, and urgencies are better handled with a little creativity.

Our smallest urgency is to continue being creative.