As with so many lessons in business, I learned this one the hard way.

For years, I was terrible at distinguishing between "this needs attention" and "this needs my personal attention right now".

I cancelled too many vacations to admit to.

Tofino.

New York.

Nicaragua.

Countless others.

Plans abandoned because something came up at work that seemed too important for me to leave. 

And then there was Coldplay.

I had tickets to see them on a Friday night. I’d been looking forward to the show for months.

Then a customer had an urgent issue. A major pivot with a hundred moving parts that they said needed to be implemented ASAP.

So I gave the tickets to my assistant and stayed behind to deal with it.

Monday morning, my assistant shared something rather interesting.

The customer had been at the Coldplay concert.

Apparently, they had decided their urgent problem could wait until Monday.

Of course, I hadn't.

It's funny now.

It was considerably less funny at the time.

The le...