10 Comments

This is such a great real world example for brining this to life. This can manifest itself in the business world where teams get bogged down in the urgent tasks and forget to engage with the important tasks.

Zooming out again we see this in UK politics at present. A government unable to think beyond its own survival while it battles a 20% deficit in the polls. This is resulting in panicked short term decisions that are harming the country and the long term outlook for the Conservative Party itself.

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Great points. And yes, politics is a great example where we kick the can down the road hoping to never face it.

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Cliché I know, but thank you for your service.

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I appreciate that.

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Less a specific example of this concept, but more of a close cousin of this framework is the Eisenhower Matrix. Folks are often unable to prioritize important (but not urgent) tasks like the ones you describe, until they get "too close" and become urgent raging dumpster files.

Come to think of it, I do have lots of specific examples. Yikes.

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Lol. The number of times I've been criticized for looking too far ahead and then criticized because I have an 'easy' project because it doesn't turn into a dumpster fire....

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It's like,

"What's YOUR job? You just keep looking around out there."

"Yes, THAT is my job."

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Come on Mike, the fight is right in front of us.

And I'm trying to stop that!

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I've experienced this, usually while intentionally keeping my head down to avoid the encroaching problems that I don't want to deal with. And then I am somehow surprised when three dumpsters burst into flames around me. In one of Jocko Willink's books, I remember reading how he learned to put his rifle at high port in the midst of an intense training exercise in order to look at the tactical problem holistically. This allowed him to think 300 yds ahead instead of the 25 yds in your Walking Range analogy.

How I think that concept can work well in the daily grind is to set aside time with no distractions, and to be quiet enough to hear our own thoughts. Then identify the nagging thoughts that are trying to remind us of an important responsibility we've been ignoring, and make a plan to deal with it. Lastly, follow through on the plan.

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Great insight. The key to the walking range was to intentionally look up and not wait for a time with no distractions but to actively look for things that history as shown are out there. Even if it's to just name it, then you know where it is and can start to do something. I think if we wait till we have quiet we'll miss more than if we intentionally and actively look. The latter is harder for sure!

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