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Mid-Week Decaf: Redefining "Urgent"
Take Back Control of Your Time and Defeat Workaholism
Alex Christidis & Iniobong Uyah
September 19, 2024
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A workaholic refers to someone who works compulsively. They spend most of their waking hours thinking about work or working. Now, this has positive outcomes as such individuals may be high achievers. But there are also downsides to it. Workaholics barely have a life outside work. If you followed our publication last week, you will know that achieving work-life balance requires equal attention to work and personal relationships.
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In her article, A Workaholic’s Guide To Reclaiming Your Life, Malissa Clark defined workaholism and outlined Six strategies for defeating workaholism. According to the author,
Workaholism is when work dominates your thoughts and your activities, to the detriment of other aspects of your life, including but not limited to your relationships and your health
And her strategies for defeating workaholism are;
✅Redefining “urgent”
✅Reinventing the to-do list
✅Learning to say “no” and delegate
✅Fixing the workaholic clock
✅Controlling rumination
✅Embracing rest and recovery
The first strategy caught my attention perhaps because I am a victim of the “Urgency mentality”. If you feel pressured to get through your to-do list because everything seems so “high priority” or you find it difficult to prioritize your tasks, then you may also be a victim of the “Urgency mentality”.
“Workaholics tend to view everything job-related as urgent”, and by failing to prioritize, they end up sacrificing their personal life, subconsciously deprioritizing those activities needed to build a life outside of work. This will tilt the balance in favor of their job but is detrimental to any relationship they might have.
To avoid this, Clark suggests a brute force approach of redefining “Urgent”. Here is how it’s done;
Review your to-do list, reflect on each task, and rate how urgent or important they seem now compared to when they were written down.
Ask for help when you find it difficult to review your to-do list. A second opinion may help you see things as they are not as they seem.
Keep notes of tasks that were not as urgent as you thought they were and try to identify them in the future.
If a similar task should arise, force yourself not to make it urgent. You can deprioritize such tasks to do them later or even delegate them
The challenge lies in making a conscious decision not to give in to the feeling of urgency. You can do so by asking yourself, why is this task “NOT URGENT” as opposed to asking yourself, why is this task “URGENT”? As a workaholic, the second question is very likely to trigger scenarios that will give credit to your feeling of urgency.
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Best Regards.
Alex