Filing income tax is important. I don’t like doing it even though we have an accountant who fills out the forms. I still must provide and organize the information.

Typically I put off doing it until early April when the April 15th deadline is looming. What was important has become urgent and must be done.

As a young manager one of the excuses I got from employees was, “It takes too long to do it the safe way.” They might have forgotten their safety glasses and they only had one quick job on the grinder. They could have it done by the time they got their safety glasses. When the piece of metal got in their eye, there was always time for the urgent trip to the ER.

Important tasks are those we know we need to do or should do. Like an annual health checkup, eating right, exercising or giving up a bad habit like smoking. My younger brother Rob died 11 years ago this week. He was a busy person and didn’t like going to doctors. Since he lived in Pittsburgh we only saw each other a few times a year. I saw Rob in March 2011 at the funeral of a relative. He had been overweight and I was surprised how good he looked. I remarked, “You’ve lost weight and look good.” Rob responded, “Yes, maybe a little too much.”

I wish I had followed up on Rob’s response.

In July, I was in Pittsburgh on business and decided to visit Rob on his birthday. My mother called and said Rob was in the hospital. I visited him there. Rob told me he had some rectal bleeding. When he became so weak he could hardly walk across the room he finally called the doctor. A colonoscopy revealed he had stage 4 cancer that had spread. Rob died on September 8, two months after discovering the cancer.

Getting a colonoscopy at Rob’s age with a history of cancer in our family was important. So is seeing a doctor annually. Colon cancer is easy to treat if caught early. He kept putting off seeing a doctor until his situation was urgent.

Rob’s two sons and four grandchildren miss “grandpa.” So does his wife. Rob’s sons followed their dad’s footsteps and have done well in the construction industry. Rob’s grandchildren are incredible young people and are now in high school.

Routine doctor visits including colonoscopies are important. Our family doctor found my testicular cancer while it was easy to treat and saved my life. That was over 30 years ago. Rob’s death convinced my other brothers to have more frequent doctor visits and colonoscopies.

It we take care of what is important in our lives we can avoid big, urgent problems. Many people struggle with relationships and marriage. They start out in love but the flame goes out. My friend, successful speaker and author Willie Jolley, and his wife Dee have been married for over 36 years and haven’t had an argument in over 34 years. They share their secrets to a great marriage in their book “Make Love, Make Money, Make it Last — 10 Secrets to a Great Marriage.” They believe one of the most important things couples can do is to learn to communicate effectively with each other. They have a weekly date night to spend quality time with each other. Willie and Dee learned how to have a happy marriage by doing what is important and avoided the urgent misery of an unhappy marriage or heartache and expense of a divorce.

Saving money for retirement is important and best started when we are young. If we wait until we are close to retirement and savings become urgent, it will be too late for a comfortable retirement.

Understanding the difference between urgent and important goes back thousands of years. In Luke:14 Jesus said, “Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work the onlookers should laugh at him and say, ‘This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.'”

This is a good lesson for government. Taking care of the environment is important, but having electricity 24/7 is urgent. People die without power in extreme heat or cold. California and now 17 other states are considering proposals to ban gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. I haven’t seen where California sat down and calculated how much more power demand this would add to the grid, especially since California wants to eliminate natural gas power in favor of weather-dependent renewables. Californians are already experiencing blackouts and are asking EV owners to charge their vehicles only during the day.

Europe may see a similar problem this winter since Russia has now shutdown its Nordstream 1 pipeline carrying natural gas from Russia to Europe. Much of this natural gas was being stored for winter heating. At recent conferences I listened to European corporate leaders claim the solution to getting off Russian gas is to replace gasoline cars in Europe with EVs and replace natural gas with weather-dependent energy sources. I didn’t see where any of them calculated the increase in electric demand and if they could meet it when adding EVs and electric heat, which is expensive and inefficient in extreme cold.

They don’t understand EVs, solar panels and windmills are fossil fuel products.

It is important to understand if we take care of what is important in our health, safety, finances relationships and other areas of our lives we can avoid the urgent and the pain and stress it brings. We should expect those in government to do the same so we can avoid being part of, “This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.”

Greg Kozera, gkozera@shalecrescentusa.com, is the director of marketing and sales for Shale Crescent USA, www.shalecrescentusa.com. He is a professional engineer with a master’s in environmental engineering and over 40 years’ experience in the energy industry. He is a professional speaker and author of four books and numerous published articles.