Any of you play Skyrim? I played the heck out of it last year and now that there is some new DLC out for it I’ll probably dive back into it in the near future. It’s a heck of a lot of fun for me. I love how open the game world is to doing things the way you want and picking up side quests to engage in alongside (or sometimes completely in lieu of) the main quest line. I have noticed, however, that I sometimes pick up so many such side quests that my to-do list gets incredibly full.
I had a weird moment of immersion silliness one day when I actually felt a little stressed about how many quests I had going in Skyrim. It was, of course, ridiculous for a game I’m playing for fun to be inducing stress rather than relieving it, right? But it probably happens more than I care to admit.
I set about doing something I frequently advise my coaching clients to do: Finish the easy stuff first. All of those “Deliver this quest item to that guy” things were the first to go. Not only were they quickly accomplished, they freed up inventory space. Luckily, with games like Skyrim you can traverse dozens of miles with the click of a button, so the fact that I ran all over the continent was no big deal. My list of outstanding quests was cut by probably 20-30% in just a few minutes.
Then I started looking for where I had clusters of quests in the same town or general area. There were some efficiencies there that kept me from having to revisit those places time and again. Even though travel on a bigger scale is handled instantly, travel around town is not so no point in not stepping right up the street to talk to that NPC of interest.
By the time I had finished those trips I had easily trimmed my quest log by 70% and was able to focus on the remaining tasks much more easily. Now I can hear you out there thinking, “Yes Rel, but what about all the other quests that you got offered while you were completing the ones you were checking off your list?” Well, I applied another philosophy I’ve picked up during my coaching career: “If it’s not a ‘Hell yes!’ it’s a ‘No.’”
In Skyrim as in life, if we’re out there doing what we’re great at, people are going to throw more quests at us than we have time to accomplish. So we must learn to be selective. If something sounds really fun and like the sort of thing that will advance us personally or professionally (like an opportunity to get our Smithing up to 90 so we can make Daedric Armor) then I say go for it! Otherwise it’s fine to say, “Thanks but you’ll have to find somebody else to handle that for you.”
There is another step in organizing my priorities that I’ve adopted from the wisdom of Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which is recognition of the difference between Urgency and Importance. I suggested this recently to a client of mine who was working on a To-Do spreadsheet. I encouraged him to include both of those as fields. Being able to distinguish between Urgent and Important is pretty...well...important. The good news is that once you understand it, much of your to-do list prioritizes itself.
Things that are both Urgent and Important tend to get done because of their nature. When describing this to my client I used the example, “Say you’re on fire. Dealing with that is something that you’re unlikely to put off until tomorrow.” Likewise things that are Not Urgent and Not Important are also not going to be a problem by their nature. I have a number of books I want to read but most of them can be put off until later because they are not immediately relevant to what I’m doing right now.
The tricky part is the portions of the quadrant where things are either Urgent or Important but not both. We unfortunately have a tendency to focus on the items or tasks that are Urgent but Not Important, rather than the ones that are Important but Not Urgent. I mean, this morning I had Facebook notifications pop up! They were red against that blue background so you could tell how urgently they needed to be clicked on. I got on that right away and was treated to several LOLCats I don’t know how I’d have survived without. Meanwhile things like posting this column (Important but not Urgent) could wait until I had a few cups of coffee (both Urgent and Important). Obviously what I should have done is drink the coffee, then post the column, then check Facebook.
Of course this Urgency/Importance dichotomy falls apart a little when it comes to games like Skyrim. Even using the loosest possible definition (we’re talking about a computer game here) of “Urgent” doesn’t apply to that game and many like it because you never fail a quest by taking too much time. Even if the quest giver tells you to hurry and “time is of the essence!”, it isn’t. So sorting by Urgency is really not possible if looked at objectively. You can engage in it from a roleplaying standpoint and put aside the fact that the game will wait on you forever. Otherwise you can simply try to gauge which quests are going to deliver the best rewards (i.e. Importance) in the absence of any sense of Urgency.
I hadn’t considered it before but maybe games like Skyrim are good practice for recognizing Importance and ignoring a false sense of Urgency. What do you think?
I had a weird moment of immersion silliness one day when I actually felt a little stressed about how many quests I had going in Skyrim. It was, of course, ridiculous for a game I’m playing for fun to be inducing stress rather than relieving it, right? But it probably happens more than I care to admit.
I set about doing something I frequently advise my coaching clients to do: Finish the easy stuff first. All of those “Deliver this quest item to that guy” things were the first to go. Not only were they quickly accomplished, they freed up inventory space. Luckily, with games like Skyrim you can traverse dozens of miles with the click of a button, so the fact that I ran all over the continent was no big deal. My list of outstanding quests was cut by probably 20-30% in just a few minutes.
Then I started looking for where I had clusters of quests in the same town or general area. There were some efficiencies there that kept me from having to revisit those places time and again. Even though travel on a bigger scale is handled instantly, travel around town is not so no point in not stepping right up the street to talk to that NPC of interest.
By the time I had finished those trips I had easily trimmed my quest log by 70% and was able to focus on the remaining tasks much more easily. Now I can hear you out there thinking, “Yes Rel, but what about all the other quests that you got offered while you were completing the ones you were checking off your list?” Well, I applied another philosophy I’ve picked up during my coaching career: “If it’s not a ‘Hell yes!’ it’s a ‘No.’”
In Skyrim as in life, if we’re out there doing what we’re great at, people are going to throw more quests at us than we have time to accomplish. So we must learn to be selective. If something sounds really fun and like the sort of thing that will advance us personally or professionally (like an opportunity to get our Smithing up to 90 so we can make Daedric Armor) then I say go for it! Otherwise it’s fine to say, “Thanks but you’ll have to find somebody else to handle that for you.”
There is another step in organizing my priorities that I’ve adopted from the wisdom of Steven Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which is recognition of the difference between Urgency and Importance. I suggested this recently to a client of mine who was working on a To-Do spreadsheet. I encouraged him to include both of those as fields. Being able to distinguish between Urgent and Important is pretty...well...important. The good news is that once you understand it, much of your to-do list prioritizes itself.
Things that are both Urgent and Important tend to get done because of their nature. When describing this to my client I used the example, “Say you’re on fire. Dealing with that is something that you’re unlikely to put off until tomorrow.” Likewise things that are Not Urgent and Not Important are also not going to be a problem by their nature. I have a number of books I want to read but most of them can be put off until later because they are not immediately relevant to what I’m doing right now.
The tricky part is the portions of the quadrant where things are either Urgent or Important but not both. We unfortunately have a tendency to focus on the items or tasks that are Urgent but Not Important, rather than the ones that are Important but Not Urgent. I mean, this morning I had Facebook notifications pop up! They were red against that blue background so you could tell how urgently they needed to be clicked on. I got on that right away and was treated to several LOLCats I don’t know how I’d have survived without. Meanwhile things like posting this column (Important but not Urgent) could wait until I had a few cups of coffee (both Urgent and Important). Obviously what I should have done is drink the coffee, then post the column, then check Facebook.
Of course this Urgency/Importance dichotomy falls apart a little when it comes to games like Skyrim. Even using the loosest possible definition (we’re talking about a computer game here) of “Urgent” doesn’t apply to that game and many like it because you never fail a quest by taking too much time. Even if the quest giver tells you to hurry and “time is of the essence!”, it isn’t. So sorting by Urgency is really not possible if looked at objectively. You can engage in it from a roleplaying standpoint and put aside the fact that the game will wait on you forever. Otherwise you can simply try to gauge which quests are going to deliver the best rewards (i.e. Importance) in the absence of any sense of Urgency.
I hadn’t considered it before but maybe games like Skyrim are good practice for recognizing Importance and ignoring a false sense of Urgency. What do you think?
