How do great entrepreneurs accomplish important tasks?

I am an entrepreneur and my website www.adityagreens.com is a platform for small entrepreneurs.

My day is often filled with important, urgent and the trivial tasks.

I always try to accomplish important tasks first but when I assess my progress, I end up doing more of trivial things and the urgent things than the important ones.

​I tried to find the main reason behind the negligence towards the important things but before this it is important to differentiate between the Important task and the Urgent task.

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The comparison
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• The urgent tasks are the ones which need immediate attention and any delay in dealing with them may result into negative and the serious consequences.

Examples of Urgent Task:
a) Paying the electricity bill by 22nd of every month
b) Baby is hungry and crying, needs attention
c) There is fire in the room, call fire brigade (Urgent)
d) Heart attack needs immediate hospitalization

• The important tasks are long- term and lifelong which generally matches with the vision of a person or the enterprise.

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The effect of delaying important task may not felt immediately but is catastrophic in a long term.

Examples of Important Task:
a) Maintaining good relationships with your family and friends
b) Achieving the long term goal of your company
c) Acquiring good education 
d) Adopting good eating habits
e) Maintaining health (mental as well as physical)
f) Choosing a career
​e) Preserving environment

There are certain tasks which are neither important nor urgent.

The examples are as follows:

• Trivial talks like talking about people and the events
• Unnecessary surfing of the internet
• Watching TV for long hours just for time pass
• Checking e-mail or social media status after every hour in a day

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Task analysis
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I analyzed that when you accomplish the urgent task, you save your position but when you accomplish the important task you grow and achieve.

For example, if I am able to pay the electricity bill on time, my present situation remains the same that is there is a supply of electricity before and after paying the bill (no growth).

The accomplishment of the urgent task saved me from falling.
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While the accomplishment of the important task like attaining a good education is shaping and improving you on the daily basis.

"Doing important task is like gradually growing with little acceleration while doing urgent task is like moving with the constant velocity."

In short, the quality of life depends on how effectively you are dealing with the important tasks.

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I found the reason
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I list the urgent tasks and evaluated my success rate:

• I found that I was able to pay my utility bills on or before time most of the time.
• I was successful in attending urgent meetings with the investors and the urgent calls on time.

My success rate while dealing with the urgent tasks was above 95%.

I was 50% efficient while accomplishing the important tasks, few of them were as follows:

• Regular interaction with the clients through personal meetings
• Sending them updates on the regular basis
• Waking early in the morning
• Keeping good eating habits

Why there was such discrepancy?

I further realized that on completing the urgent task on time I save my position but delaying or non-accomplishment of it was associated with serious negative consequences like the monetary penalty, or discontinuation of the services.

Whereas in the case of the important task, the accomplishment is associated with the growth but the non-accomplishment is not associated with any nearby serious consequences.

The “negative serious consequence” is missing from your state of mind when the important task is not completed.

"This is human psychology when your brain does not foresee any negative consequence due to non-accomplishment of the task, it remains dormant and avoids doing it."

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"Urgent" was once "Important"
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It is due to negligence of Important tasks by you in the past that made them Urgent now.

It is important to maintain good health (mentally as well as physically).

When you neglect your health (an important task) like avoid doing regular exercise or you start eating unhealthy good, your health deteriorates gradually with time. 

The continuous negligence of this important task may result in serious health complications like high blood pressure, diabetes, depression, or even a heart-attack. 

All these conditions are now urgent in nature that need immediate attention otherwise it may become life-threatening.

Somewhere, these complications are derived due to the continual negligence of the Important tasks.

"Preserve the environment until it becomes URGENT"

You, I and We can at least plant one tree irrespective of our location and the financial status.

Make Important task URGENT
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The main reason that we tend to fail in the doing the important tasks is the lack of the serious deadlines.

The urgent tasks are dealt immediately because serious consequences are attached to them, like:

• When you do not pay the electricity bill on time there is a penalty after the due date and if you miss the due date the electric supply is disconnected. You need to go through many processes to get it re-connected. This is something which is serious enough to push you to pay the bill on time.
• Similarly, when someone with heart-attack is not dealt on an urgent basis, the outcome could be life threatening.

You can see that the urgent tasks are associated with the very serious, generally negative, consequences that push you to deal with them on time.

How to make Important tasks serious?

Make an announcement: 
Whenever you set any deadline for the accomplishment of your important task, make it public by share among your colleagues, employees, family and friends.

For example, announce the important task like:

“I will reduce 5 kg in 2 months from now by regular exercise and healthy eating habits”

This will create a social pressure to accomplish your goal as non-accomplishment may create a dent in your reputation

Attach a reward and the punishment: 
I feel, doing and accomplishing the important task is a reward in itself. It is important to set more stringent consequences for non-accomplishment of the target.

I mean to say that you need to create a pain in your mind when important goals are not met.

For example, if I miss my daily routine of 1 km brisk walk then I’ll do the 3 km walking the next day. 

Make a daily planner: 
​The important task are long term in nature therefore, you need to break them into smaller activities that can be accomplished on the daily basis.

The daily planner can help you in achieving your goal as it reminds your progress on the daily basis and maintains your accountability.

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Conclusion
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The only thing which sets great entrepreneurs apart from others is that they make important things urgent by attaching the relevant serious consequences with them and implementing (punishment) whenever the  target is not achieved.

They know that it is important to maintain both the stability and the acceleration in the life.

Therefore, they try to maintain the balance between the urgent task and the important task.

​They generally avoid non-important and non-urgent tasks like unnecessary talks and useless activities.

​Rather, they try to utilize free time in shaping their ideas into reality.