A Mom's Fable: The Firefighter, Architect & Creative

Many productivity experts say that our success is determined by how we manage important vs. urgent tasks. 

As a mom - The best list of prioritized tasks often gets thrown off by out of the blue emergencies and unexpected asks. 

I’m gonna teach you two key things that’ll help you respond more effectively in the moment and feel more peace by the end of the day.

What I’m here to tell you is you can choose to decide how you’re going to respond to each task, as they come in at you like a firehose and you can increase your satisfaction each day.

This leads me to a story I’d like to share about the firefighter, architect, and artist. 

Once upon a time, in a village nestled between the mountains, there lived three sisters - Fia the Firefighter, Ava the Architect, and Clara the Creative.

Fia was always the first to arrive at any crisis, rushing headlong with her water buckets and quick thinking to extinguish the urgent blazes. Whether it was resolving feuds between the baker's kids or rescuing the blacksmith's cat from a tree, Fia's reactive heroics were invaluable. But sometimes she became so consumed with putting out fires that she'd miss out on the rest of village life.

Ava, on the other hand, walked the streets with her head thinking about the amazing future to be had, imagining designs that would be improving her and everyone else's lives. She envisions the blueprints to build a new fountain in the town square and how she could reorganize the farmers' crop rotations. While others appreciated her innovative visions, she felt frustrated by her inability to make life richer for the village due to all the emergencies and drama. 

The youngest sister was free-spirited Clara. She wanted to spend hours lovingly tending the village flower gardens, dashing off vibrant murals on the building walls, or composing melodies on her flute but her creative spirit was constantly thwarted, due to the intrusion of the emergencies constantly forcing their way into village life. Clara knew she could add fun, adventure, and so much beauty, but the lack of opportunities was constantly pushed aside by the village emergencies that seemed to overtake the village each day. Clara knew adding fun and adventure to village life was not only necessary, the ‘magic’ to a much fuller village life, but how with all the firefighting?