How many urgent things are on your desk right now? How many times has someone stepped up to you and given you one more urgent item? Some days…some weeks…it seems that those urgent things make up 90 percent of what’s on our agenda. Or rather, they replace the important things on our To Do list. And while those things usually are urgent, they can keep you from moving forward in ministry and in life.

Dutch theologian Henri Nouwen said, “If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential.”

Do you feel that way? I often do. And it isn’t just in work or ministry, it is in family and all of life. Someone somewhere “needs” my attention on something they feel is urgent.

And what about all those meetings? A study done at Harvard surveyed CEOs over a 12-year period. Their average week contained 37 meetings! And that accounted for a whopping 72 percent of their work week. Yikes! Quicksand all around.

It’s more than just meetings or interruptions. There is the whole digital world that we are immersed in. In fact, we are generators of disruptions to someone else’s schedule and priorities. Yes, we are all in this together. In a book by Nicholas Carr called The Shallows we read this:

“What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles.”

And if you are like me, I feel like I am sometimes drowning in that stream. Any hope? John Maxwell in his classic book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership writes, “It is the responsibility of leaders to make tough decisions based on priorities.” In other words, you and I must make the decision on what is most important at the moment. That may mean ignoring what seems urgent or delegating its solution to someone else. Maxwell goes on to cite something called the Pareto Principle, which states that if you spend your time on tasks that rank in the top 20 percent of importance, you will see an 80 percent return on investment.

If you have a To Do list with 10 items you have prioritized, you simply concentrate on the first two things…if you want to be productive and effective. The others may be for another day or another person. By the way…that is easy to say, but hard to do. It is a learned discipline for most of us.

I think of the Apostle Paul who said, “This one thing I do….” Focus. Priority. Or Jesus, who set His face toward Jerusalem. No doubt Jesus passed by some people in need, but His priority was the Cross.

Today…step away from the quicksand of the urgent. Set your priorities on the most important things in your ministry and in your life. And see what God will do in and through you with that kind of focus.

…I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

Philippians 3:13-14 NLT

God’s best…