Menu

Work on Things that are Important not Urgent

 

geralt / Pixabay

If you work on things that are important you will see that they never become urgent.  Things become urgent after you have neglected to work on them when they were important.

Urgent tasks are tasks that have to be dealt with immediately.

These are things like phone calls, tasks with impending deadlines, and situations where you have to respond quickly. Responding to an email, when you have to do it, is usually an urgent task.

Important tasks are tasks that contribute to long-term missions and goals.

These are things like that book you want to write, the presentation you’d like to make for a promotion, and the company you plan on starting.

Work on Things are are Important not Urgent

Developed by Dwight Eisenhower, a five-star general in the United States Army, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe during World War II, President of Columbia University, oh, and a two-term US President, this simple box divides tasks into simple categories:

In the top-left corner (Important and Urgent), you might put things like crises, deadlines, and problems.

The top-right corner (Important and Not Urgent) could consist of things like relationships, long-term projects planning, and recreation.

The bottom-left corner (Not Important and Urgent) might consist of interruptions, meetings, and activities.

The bottom-right corner (Not Important and Not Urgent) might consist of time wasters, pleasant activities, and other trivial tasks.

It’s pretty easy to eliminate the not important, not urgent stuff. That’s kind of a no brainer. You want to spend as little time there as possible.

Important and urgent things are also obviously the first things you should be tackling.

But what about prioritizing between the other two quadrants? That’s where things get difficult.

Most people default to doing urgent tasks first — the problem is that if you’re always doing urgent tasks, you’re not able to accomplish important tasks.

Urgent tasks always come up. And there will always be more urgent tasks than you have time to accomplish, no matter how hard you try.

Have you ever found yourself saying, “[X] is really important, but I don’t have time for it right now”?

Whenever you do that, you’re making that trade-off between important and urgent. Lao Tzu says, “Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time,’ is like saying, ‘I don’t want to.’”

Or as Picasso put it, “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”

First Seen on https://crew.co/blog/urgent-vs-important/