I get emails and phone calls from people all the time. Some have the nerve to tell me the message is “important”. Some even mark the little exclamation point in Outlook that denotes ‘importance’ or ‘high priority’ when they email me.

I have news for those people (and for you).

Your email isn’t important. Your voicemail isn’t important.

Not in the grand scheme of things at least.

Honestly, your email, your message, your phone call and your  important ‘task’ is meaningless at times.  Not all the time mind you…some people have a real message to share that IS important.  But…most times, people abuse the notion of importance.

I’ve spent the last week worrying myself sick (and watching my wife do the same) over our 10 year old Chinchilla, BB. BB has GI Stasis which is a killer in animals like Chinchillas, Rabbits and others.    We’ve had BB in to see a vet multiple times over the last 1.5 weeks and the prognosis isn’t good. We are hand-feeding her three times a day with no visible improvements on her part. I suspect that we’ll have to make a very difficult decision in the next few days.

This is important.  Do you think your request is more important than Tracie and I trying to nurse a family member back to health?  Do you think your message is more important than the decision that Tracie and I will have to make over the next few days?

Importance isn’t helping you do something because you ‘need it right now’.  Importance isn’t reading your marketing message.  Importance isn’t responding to your plea for help when said help is only to help you make money.

You know what’s really important?

My family. My  friends. My health.  My Life.

If you can’t place an item into one of those four buckets, the importance, to me, isn’t really there.

Don’t get me wrong.  There are things in life that don’t fall into the above four buckets…but the level of importance isn’t as great.  You shouldn’t expect someone to drop everything and jump on your problem just because you think its important.

Just remember…importance is relative. The next time you demand someone do something for you because its ‘important’, take a second to think about how your important issue might not quite match that person’s levels of importance.