Officer Training – Urgent vs Important w/ Colonel Mark Blum

Every week the officers in our command get together and spend 20 minutes on personal and professional development training. It is a time of discussion where we view a short video or read a short article and then discuss how we can use that information to make ourselves better, our command better, and our Navy better; in that order. The training also gives me the opportunity to learn from the collective and share my thoughts and prospective from 20 years of hard won experience.

Col. Mark Blum’s article is an old one, but his message is just as relevant 20 years back as it is today.

• What do you think your parents wish that they changed when it came to spending time with you?
• Immediate gratification vs. delayed gratification. How do you think through which is better.
• Col. Blum lost 24 days of leave one year. Why? And how do you think he processed the important vs urgent?
• How can you apply his three rules of what constitutes an important event?:
  • If it is important to someone who’s important to you
  • Your persona presence makes a difference
  • The opportunity is not going to come around again
• How can you or the command apply this information this week?