I was today. I co-lead our company’s tech review team, and it wasn’t my turn to facilitate the meeting. We’ve rebooted the process recently and it’s been going really well. Attendance (largely developers who choose willingly to come) has been growing. All good things. Well today I’m tempted to skip it in lieu of another project I’m working on — that one is a ‘big deal’ and requires a lot of research in a relatively short amount of time. So I think “I can skip tech review and work on my research project”. Well I’m really glad I didn’t, and it was a good reminder for me. After the meeting I had somebody come up to us, the facilitators, and thank us for getting the team going again. The reminder: skipping a meeting when you’re busy is one thing, when you lead something you need to invest in its success and growth at every opportunity. Don’t be overly distracted by the urgent things and not get to what’s important. That’s something I learned from a little (30 page) book I read in college called The Tyranny of the Urgent. It’s a Christian book, which makes sense I suppose because it was a Christian college, so it ties in faith as it makes its point. But the point of taking time to do the important thing, especially as a leader, has stuck with me.