Doing what is important first

The road less traveled. Mount diablo, California

This trip to San Francisco has been a lesson in knowing the difference between what is urgent and what is important. Each of us is flooded with urgent tasks: every alert on our device,  every email and missed phone call, all the things people have asked of us and that we have asked of ourselves. 

Learning to let the urgent go and to prioritize the important tasks is insanely hard. The important tasks are the ones we most dread doing. They are soul crushingly difficult but they are also the only ones that really matter when we are laying on our death bed looking back at our life. 

I won't be proud of how many emails I sent or how updated I kept my twitter feed. I will lay there thinking of the things that scared me — the important things. 

The important things only happen if we stop responding to urgent tasks and give ourselves the time to show up and do the difficult work. The work our soul calls out for us to accomplish or at least attempt. 

What work are you scared of doing?