"Don't be a time manager, be a priority manager."

- Denis Waitley

How to Make Measurable Progress Toward Your Most-Neglected Goals

By Michael Masterson

To Master Plan your new life, you must begin with long-term goals that correspond to your core values. From that good start, you must establish yearly and monthly objectives. Based on those objectives, you create weekly and daily task lists. Doing all that will help greatly. But if you want to really change your life, you have to learn how to prioritize.

I didn't always know how to prioritize. For much of my business career, I relied on goal setting and task lists and was happy with the results. But when I turned 50 and started writing for Early to Rise, I began to read how other business leaders achieved their goals. And that's when I discovered what a huge difference prioritizing can make.

The most important lesson I learned came from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. In that book, Covey presents a technique for prioritizing that impressed me greatly and soon became a central part of my planning process.

Divide your tasks, Covey says, into four categories:

• Not important and not urgent

• Not important but urgent

• Important but not urgent

• Important and urgent

In the "not important and not urgent" category, you would put such things as:

• Catching up on office gossip

• Shopping online for personal items

• Answering unimportant phone calls

• Responding to unimportant e-mails

In the "not important but urgent" category, you would include:

• Returning phone calls from pesky salespeople

• Making last-minute preparations for an office party

• Attending a required meeting that doesn't help your career

• Planning for a meeting that doesn't matter

In the "important and urgent" category, you might list:

• Making last-minute preparations for an important meeting with the boss

• Making last-minute sales calls to key clients

• Solving unexpected problems

And, finally, in the "important but not urgent" category, you might include:

• Learning how to write better

• Learning how to speak better

• Learning how to think better

• Working on your novel

• Getting down to a healthy weight

When you break up tasks into these four categories, it's easy to see that you should give no priority at all to "not important and not urgent" tasks. In fact, these tasks should not be done at all. They are a waste of time. Yet many people spend lots of time on them because they tend to be easy to do and sometimes enjoyable in a mindless sort of way. Or because they are afraid to get to work on important tasks because they are afraid of failure.

Even worse than spending time on tasks that are not important and not urgent is spending time on those that are not important but urgent. They should have been dealt with long before they reached the crisis stage.

If you discover that you are spending a lot of time on unimportant tasks, you've got a serious problem. Unless you change your ways, you're unlikely to achieve any of your important goals.

So which tasks should you give priority to?

In Seven Habits, Covey says that most people think they should give priority to important and urgent tasks. But this is a mistake. "It's like the pounding surf," he says. "A huge problem comes and knocks you down and you're wiped out. You struggle back up only to face another one that knocks you down and slams you to the ground." You are "literally beat up by problems all day every day."

All urgent tasks - both unimportant and important - are problematic: They are urgent because you've neglected something or because they are important to other people (like your boss). In either case, you need to find a way to keep most of them from winding up on your daily to-do list. This means making some changes in your work habits - usually a combination of being more efficient and delegating more chores to other people.

Urgent tasks will burn you out. And turn you into an unhappy workaholic. If you want transformation in your life, you have to give priority to the important but not urgent tasks - because those are the ones that will help you achieve your major, long-term goals.

It's not easy.

The important but not urgent tasks whisper, while the urgent tasks shout. But there is a way to get that critical but quiet stuff done in four simple steps:

Step 1. When planning your day, divide your tasks into Covey's four categories: not important and not urgent, not important but urgent, important but not urgent, and important and urgent.

Step 2. You will, of course, have to do the urgent tasks - at least until you get better at taking charge of your schedule. And you will have to find a way to get rid of the tasks that are not important and not urgent. But make sure you include one important but not urgent task that, when completed, will move you closer to one of your long-term goals.

Step 3. Highlight that important but not urgent task on your to-do list. Make it your number one priority for the day.

Step 4. Do that task first - before you do anything else.

Initially, you will find it difficult to do an important but not urgent task first. There are reasons for that.

• Since it is not urgent, you don't feel like it's important. But it is.

• Since it supports a goal you've been putting off, you are in the habit of neglecting it.

• You are in the habit of neglecting it because you don't think it's important and because you might be afraid of doing it.

• You might be afraid of doing it because you know, deep down inside, that it will change your life. And change, even good change, is scary.

But once you start using this little four-step technique, you'll notice something right away.

The first thing you'll notice is how good you feel. Accomplishing something you've been putting off is energizing. It will erase some doubts you have about yourself - doubts caused by years of "never getting to" your long-term goals.

That extra energy and confidence will grow, and will fuel you throughout the day. This will make it easier for you to accomplish other important but not urgent tasks.

As the days go by, you will realize that you are making measurable progress toward your neglected goals. In just a few weeks, you will be amazed at how much you've already done. And in 52 weeks - a short year from now - you will be a brand-new, much more productive person.

That year is going to pass by anyway. You are going to spend the time somehow. Why not do it by taking charge of your schedule? Why not spend that time on yourself - on what's really important to you?

A $6 Natural Cure for Poor Liver Function

By Shane Ellison

You gotta love your liver. It's the chief organ responsible for allowing you to "toss a few back" and enjoy your wine buzz without getting sick. It also protects you from many toxins. Unfortunately, it's not invincible. When the liver is bombarded with too many toxins, it gets hard and stops working.

Cirrhosis of the liver is one of the 10 leading causes of death in the U.S.... and it goes virtually unnoticed. So does its simple cure... which you can find on the shelf at your local drugstore: milk thistle.

Milk thistle - which has many anti-aging properties - is in the daisy family. It is able to bind to the squishy membrane of our cells and form a protective "shield" from such things as alcohol, environmental pollutants, poisonous mushrooms, and prescription drugs. Research published in the scientific journal Hepatology Research indicates that milk thistle can be used successfully to treat not only cirrhosis but also hepatitis (liver inflammation and dysfunction) caused by viral infection and excess alcohol consumption.

Big Pharma has been trying to identify and design a molecular copycat that mimics milk thistle's healing molecules. To date, they have failed. But that doesn't mean you can't benefit from the natural source. This powerful liver protector is fairly easy to find. You can buy it at RiteAid, on Amazon.com, and at Wal-Mart. You'll pay only about $6 for a month's supply.

It's Good to Know: Tattooed Vaccines?

If you have a fear of needles, please read no further. German researchers have found that injecting certain types of vaccines with a vibrating tattoo gun is more effective than traditional injections. In lab tests with mice, vaccines injected with a tattoo needle produced an immune response 16 times greater than a single injection with a syringe. The theory is that because the rapidly moving, multi-needle tattoo gun "damages" the skin more than a single injection, the vaccine is more easily absorbed.

The scientists don't expect this practice to become widespread with human patients. (It hurts!) But they say it would be ideal for vaccinating animals.

(Source: BBC)

Word to the Wise: Sere

"Seer" (SEER) - from the Old English - means dry and withered.

Example (as used by Angela Carter in Shaking A Leg): "There was a lavatory at the end of the garden beyond a scraggy clump of Michaelmas daisies that never looked well in themselves, always sere, never blooming, the perennial ghosts of themselves, as if ill-nourished by an exhausted soil."

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These articles appear courtesy of Early to Rise [Issue #2299, 03-10-08], the Internet's most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.