Tyranny of the Urgent Pamphlet – April 19, 1994

Charles E. Hummel wrote, “Have you ever wished for a thirty-hour day?” Hummel answers his own question: “But wouldn’t we soon be just as frustrated as we are now with our twenty-four-hour allotment?” (How about a 13-month year?)By page 4, the author is almost poetic: “The winds of other people’s demands and our own inner compulsions, have driven us onto a reef of frustration.” Time is not the problem, Hummel preaches, the problem is priorities. “We live in constant tension between the urgent and the important.”Hummel, who served as executive director of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA and president of Barrington College, died in 2004 at age 81. His popular pamphlet packs a punch. He quotes Jesus’ prayer in John 17, at the conclusion of his 33-year ministry: “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.”The author pokes us: are we crowding our schedules with “priorities” not assigned to us by our Father? Yikes! He documents how Jesus often left, or postponed, pressing priorities to focus on his Father’s work. What a life-giving reminder! Hummel points us to Mark 1:35 and asks, “What was the secret of Jesus’ ministry?”The author blends theology with practicality and mentions a student who was proud of his “stewardship of time” and rejected Hummel’s counsel to begin tracking his time. But a month later, this engineering major relented and upon conducting his own time inventory, found an extra six hours per week that could be better utilized! He wrote Hummel to thank him.More Insights:• On budgeting your time—there’s no need to change everything overnight. “Our Lord is a gracious teacher who helps us to learn one lesson at a time.”• “I have come to realize that I am the indispensable person only until the moment I say no.”• Schedule one hour per week for a spiritual inventory assessment. “Ironically, the busier we get, the more we need these periods—and the less we seem able to schedule them. We become like the fanatic, who unsure of his direction, doubles his speed.”“Over the years, I have found that one of the greatest struggles in the Christian life is the effort to make adequate time for:• daily waiting on God,• weekly inventory,• and monthly planning.Yet this is the path to escaping the tyranny of the urgent.”Hummel was the author of numerous books, including two full-length books on the “tyranny of the urgent” theme:• “Priorities: Tyranny of the Urgent (Christian Basics Bible Studies: Six Studies for Individuals or Groups)," by Charles E. Hummel.• "Freedom from Tyranny of the Urgent," by Charles E. Hummel. (Note: Winner of the 2004 ECPA Platinum Book Award).So…can we live on just 24 hours each day? Yes!

Hummel simply offers a way out of the urgency of day-to-day living. Just 31 pages to a new and well-paced life.

This is a classic that every Christian should read. It distinguishes between what is urgent on the one hand and what is important on the other hand. This is an essential distinction that every Christian (probably every person) should learn. Hummel then proposes a way to make the important drive the urgent rather than the other way around. This plan uses a daily time with God, a weekly evaluation, and monthly planning.The examples are somewhat dated; he considers a phone on a wall to be obtrusive without imagining mobile phones with texting and social media. Also, his picture of Jesus tends toward that of a really good human teacher. Still, the fundamental point is worth this read of less than 30 minutes.

This book is an excellent reminder of the absolute fact that “time” is a constant and we cannot really have “too much” or “not enough”. Rather, we set priorities for the time we have. In some ways, blaming “time” for why we don’t do things or get things done is to blame God and absolve ourselves of the responsibility we have to prioritize our time rightly.

How you manage time is like a fractal image: how you use an hour affects what is accomplished in a day, how you spend a day impacts if your weekly goals are met, how well you manage your week leads to how the months and years go by… with accomplishments and strong relationships or not. Regret is inevitable to those who live a life without attention to the precious moments we are allocated. You will not regret taking the time to read this small book.

I first read this as an article in Inter Varsity’s periodical when I was in college. Now as an expanded book form, I bought this as a gift who was juggling her teaching job and being a mother of five. In reading it again before giving it to my friend, I was impressed with how timeless Hummel’s counsel still is. Even more so when one considers the noisy demands of the urgent in contemporary life.

My former pastor recommended this book in Sunday school class one day. I bought and downloaded it immediately! The irony is that its taken me years to finally devote time to read it. This is a great book to help you overcome the burdens this world holds over proper time management. By resetting your priorities, you can then reset your focus. Hummel helps us develop strategies to set the God ordained priorities of each individual life. If you struggle with time management, like I do, you HAVE to read this book!!!!!

This is a great little book to read, however... This price is actually really high for what you get. This is a very small and very short book. It should be printed larger and then it may be worth the price charged. Additionally, the font on multiple pages was very light because the printer must have been running out of ink. The small font with faded text made it hard to read on those pages.