Your days fly by, your lists grow longer, and in the evening you feel like you've run without having lived? The problem isn't your schedule; it's the small decision you make each morning without thinking: urgent first, or important first? Here's how to take control back, concretely.
In an ordinary day, there are two lists that coexist poorly. The first is the urgent list: what life demands you to do right away, under threat of trouble. The overdue work, the errands, the DIY tasks, the paperwork, the time you owe to others.
The second list, no one ever writes down. It’s the important list: walking in nature, contemplating beautiful things, taking the time to call an old friend, sitting for a few minutes doing nothing but breathing and being present.
These two lists do not play in the same category. The urgent has a deadline, a ringing, a notification, sometimes someone waiting behind. The important, on the other hand, demands nothing, makes no noise, and is almost never urgent. That’s precisely why it almost always loses.
In theory, we all know very well what matters. Ask anyone what gives value to a life: no one will answer "replying to my emails." And yet, in practice, it's the email that wins.
The reason is simple and somewhat vexing: the urgent offers an immediate and tangible benefit, while the important provides a deferred and vague benefit. Checking off a task brings a relief that is felt in the body right away. Fifteen minutes of silence, on the other hand, will only produce their effect later, discreetly, without a receipt.
Psychologists call this a self-control deficit: we regularly sacrifice a future happiness, therefore virtual, for an immediate pleasure, therefore concrete. Lack of self-control is not just about eating sugar when you're diabetic; it's also about sacrificing the important for the easy every day.
Nota Bene: there is even a word for this gap between our intentions and our actions, akrasia, this weakness of will that makes us get angry when we had decided to stay calm, or respond to texts when we had decided to work. It is neither a vice nor a fatality: it is a normal, predictable difficulty that can be worked on through repetition and not through guilt.
The battle between the urgent and the important does not take place at 5 PM, when you are already overwhelmed. It happens in the morning, during those minutes when the house is still asleep and you finally have a piece of time that belongs to no one.
The temptation is strong: to take advantage of this calm to catch up on work, send emails, or make progress on pending tasks. It's efficient, it's relieving, and it's also the best way to never do what truly matters. Because if you don't take care of the important now, the urgent will grab you by the throat in an hour, and night will fall before you've finished.
The other option, the only one that truly reverses the logic of the day: sit down. Fifteen minutes, no more. On a chair, a bench, a cushion, it doesn't matter. Back straight but relaxed, eyes closed or gaze directed in front of you, focusing on the air that enters through your nose, descends into your lungs, comes out a bit warmer, on the belly and chest that rise and fall.
When the mind wanders to the to-do list (it will wander, that's its job), gently bring it back to the breath, without getting angry. Then the rest will follow. And it will come better.
Let's be fair: the urgent is not the enemy. It encompasses everything that keeps a life afloat—earning a living, filling the fridge, fixing the leaky faucet, being there for loved ones when they need you. No one can dismiss the urgent.
The problem is not its legitimacy; it's its appetite. The urgent never settles for the space you give it; it takes whatever is left. A delayed task demands a morning, then an evening, then a weekend, and you find yourself living inside a list that never empties.
A very practical tip: handle the urgent in bulk rather than in bits. Let the phone ring and call everyone back at the end of the day, group emails into a single time slot, physically distance your mobile from the room where you work (entrusting it to someone else is a remarkably effective trick). This is not discipline for the sake of discipline: each interruption costs you more time than the task itself.
What's important is almost always very mundane, which explains why we neglect it. Walking, looking, listening, talking. None of these activities appear on a dashboard, yet all are part of the memories that matter.
Take admiration, for example. It cannot be decreed, but it can be cultivated, and two rules are enough. The first: admire with your heart and not just with your head. It’s not enough to mentally note that a sky, a tree, or a face is beautiful; you must physically stop for a few minutes, observe, understand what touches you, and feel the pleasure of contemplation.
The second rule: lower the threshold of what amazes you. If you only admire the exceptional, you will be happy three times a year. If you learn to see what is discreet and invisible to the hurried eye, you multiply the opportunities to feel good.
And then there are friends. All surveys on happiness point to the same thing: connections, family, companions, neighbors are among the most solid ingredients of a happy life. However, seeing your friends is typically something important and never urgent: it therefore gets pushed aside for years if you don’t concretely set a date for it in your calendar.
We must honestly name what drives us towards the urgent: it is not duty, it is relief. The burden of "things to do but not done" constantly weighs on the mind, and the only known way to lighten it is to complete one.
This relief is real; it is not illusory. You feel a bit better afterward, and you feel it immediately. The catch is that it is endless: as soon as one task drops off, another rises in line, and the burden reconstitutes itself exactly.
The solution is not to forbid yourself this relief, but to change the order. Do the important first, the urgent second. You will find that the urgent never disappears for lack of attention, while the important does.
Here may be the most liberating point: you will not win this battle definitively. There is no version of you, two years from now, that will have resolved the issue once and for all and will live serenely on the side of what matters.
At times, you will succeed, and you will always feel good about it. At other times, you will again be a slave to the urgent, running after deadlines while promising yourself to breathe later. That's how it is. This battle will take place as long as you exist, and the fact that it occurs is precisely the sign that you are alive.
This clarity is not resignation; it is acceptance, and it is not the same thing. To accept is not to say "it's fine," but to say "it's there," then immediately move on to the only useful question: what can I do, now? Without this step, you spend your time mentally fighting against reality ("it's not possible!", "I'm dreaming!"), which exhausts you without changing anything.
There is something else besides your schedule in this story: a collective pressure for "right now," a kind of urgency that affects society as a whole. You can recognize it by small signs. That "talk to you soon!" left at the end of a voicemail, for example, which gently implies: call me back immediately, and make it quick.
It also lurks in our tiny annoyances. A download that takes too long, and you sigh: this is slow! But no, it’s not slow. A few minutes to retrieve a mass of data is remarkably fast. It’s you who are impatient.
The correction consists of four gestures, and it is surprisingly effective: breathe, relax your shoulders that have tensed up without you noticing, close your eyes for a moment, and smile, even a tiny silly smile. You won’t go any faster, but you will stop paying for the world’s slowness with your good mood.
Remember the general principle: in our time, we need to slow down much more often than we need to speed up.
This is undoubtedly one of the most powerful recipes for happiness, and one of the most puzzling due to its simplicity: having time to do what you love.
Take a closer look. A large part of your daily activities would make you happy if you had the time to engage in them, and they stress you out only because you are doing them on a tight schedule. Gardening, taking care of your children, grocery shopping, and even certain aspects of your work: the same activity can be a pleasure or a chore depending on the time you have for it.
Having enough time is an infinite luxury. It can be bought with money, which is what the very wealthy do: they have others perform the boring tasks, thus giving themselves time for what they truly love.
But money is not the only currency. Beyond a certain level of comfort, which ensures a dignified and peaceful life, there is a more powerful way to feel better than earning more: taking the time to live and savor what you already have.
Time can also be bought with wisdom, that is to say, through conscious life choices. Two very concrete levers: work less or spend less. The second often makes the first possible, and that's where it's easier to start.
Spending less requires questioning a reflex. Buying is the easiest act our societies offer: with a click, a swipe of a credit card, at any hour, even with money we don’t have. And often, we buy to console ourselves, to numb ourselves, to avoid thinking about what is complicated in our lives. Spending to un-think, in a way.
The countermeasure is simple: reintroduce slowness before making a purchase. In front of the object or the online cart, ask yourself two questions, honestly. "Do I really need this?" And: "Am I just looking for an easy consolation for a lack that I haven't identified?"
In the same vein, a ridiculously easy piece of advice to apply: watch less television. Its intensive use tends to make us a bit more dissatisfied, and dissatisfaction brings us back to the screen; the loop closes quickly. Walk, read, talk: it’s a much better program, and it gives you back time in one-hour chunks.
Some days, the morning fifteen minutes won't happen. Too early, too late, too many things. There remains a fallback solution: to sprinkle small moments of mindfulness throughout the day. Thirty seconds in the elevator, two minutes before starting the car, the time of a red light, while waiting for the water to boil.
The method is the same, in miniature: you stop, feel your breath, notice what is happening in your body and around you (the sounds, the light, the air on your skin), you seek nothing in particular, you are just there. These pauses are undeniably beneficial.
But let's be honest: it's not quite as good. By settling for these crumbs, you are slowly depriving yourself, and you feel it deep down. It's a useful crutch, not a replacement.
Nota Bene: mindfulness is not about emptying your mind or "not thinking," but about paying attention to what is happening now, without judgment. A handy guideline for practicing it daily is the triple A: Before, After, Elsewhere. The more your mind wanders to the future, the past, or elsewhere instead of staying in the here and now, the less your well-being decreases. This aligns with what research says about attention: the more the mind wanders, the less happy we are, and the best predictor of pleasant emotions is not so much the nature of the activity but the degree of attention with which we engage in it. Truly focusing on your work makes you happier than engaging in a hobby while thinking about something else.
So, what to do starting tomorrow? Three things, no more. Set aside ten or fifteen minutes in the morning for what’s important before touching anything else. Schedule in your calendar, like a non-negotiable appointment, a walk, a call to an old friend, an evening without screens. And when impatience rises at a red light or a loading page, breathe, relax your shoulders, smile. You won’t have won the war against the urgent; no one does. But you will have reclaimed, day by day, some pieces of your life.
Author Audrey on 21 October 2021
Trade and Society : Industry
Author Audrey on 10 February 2023
Trade and Society : Services