Dec 19th, 2009
The Holidays are the Perfect Example of Critical and Important
If Stephen Covey’s greatest contribution to time management is the concept of prioritizing by what’s important–how much something means to you–and what’s critical–when something must be completed by–shopping for your holiday gifts (something I’m completing this weekend) is the perfect example of prioritizing.
Since dollars are always limited, we prioritize our gift giving by importance–who is currently important in your life? Perhaps people you don’t see very often anymore fall off, but new acquaintances get added on. This is the way we make decisions about who gets a gift and who doesn’t. Perhaps the neighbors don’t get gifts but the mailman does–that shows what (and who) you consider important.
The critical part of things has to do with deadlines. We have a very clear deadline for this kind of shopping: close of business December 24th; if it becomes Christmas morning and we have unpurchased gifts, people get checks or whatever 7-11 happens to have in stock that day (instant ramen anyone?).
One of the points made by the late Randy Pausch was that as things get more critical, the “time is money” principle really comes into effect: as time gets short, it gets very expensive to do things. If I know in advance that I am getting, say, a bike jersey as a gift for someone, I have a lot of time to get it for about $15-$25 from a vendor like Performance Bike; if I’m down to a day or two, I’m left with options locally that are about $70! That’s somewhat of an extreme example, but we’re talking almost triple to quintuple the price.
As I’m down to less than a week to finish with my shopping, I may have missed some of the best deals, but I still have a pretty decent plan. I’m hoping that I don’t run into absolutely critical situations, but it’s certainly possible I will, so we’ll see how things play out. Here’s hoping you don’t run into something critical with under a week to go!
[...] more here: The Holidays are the Perfect Example of Critical and Important … By admin | category: critical | tags: chabel, concept, featured-sites, how-much | Pa. [...]
[...] Uncommon Cents reminds readers that the closer you come to a deadline, the more critical — and expensive — things will be. This is very appropriate for last-minute holiday [...]
[...] Uncommon Cents reminds readers that the closer you come to a deadline, the more critical — and expensive — things will be. This is very appropriate for last-minute holiday [...]