Is it Really Urgent?

What is the difference between urgent and important?

“What is important is seldom urgent,” Dwight D. Eisenhower is known for saying, “and what is urgent is seldom important.”

It is natural to focus on whatever seems most pressing now and checking an item off the to-do list, without getting to work that is most important in the long term. If you wait to do what’s important until your schedule clears up a little, odds are that it won’t. You will always feel about as busy as you are now, and as your career progresses you may even accumulate more responsibilities. Managing how time is spent is a challenge all leaders face. Determining what is important from what is urgent will help prioritize where time could be spent most effectively.

Every day has 24 hours

The way a leader spends his/her time shows other’s what to prioritize. Role modeling effective time use aligned to the most important goals leads to organization-wide success.

The Pareto Principle, better known as the 80/20 Rule tells us 20% of actions will lead to 80% of results. In other words, 20% of work tasks accomplish 80% of our goals. What seems urgent may not align with long-term goals and can be distracting from what really matters.

“People often think that because they are running just as fast as they can, they are urgent, when in fact they are simply anxious. Anxiety is not urgency,” says John Kotter, author of A Sense of Urgency.

According to a 2018 Harvard Business Review study that tracked the time allocation of 27 CEOs over an extended period, the CEOs worked an average of 62.5 hours a week. Yet it still feels like there is never enough time to get everything done and there is always more to do. Leadership is mentally and physically demanding, much time is spent in meetings, dealing with unexpected issues, and finding time for other stakeholders. Leaders also have a need to make time for family, relationships, health personal development, and rest to be successful.

To solve this time crunch issue, work to identify what 20% of activities align to the long-term goals of the organization and make those the priority.

Focus on What Matters

Drawing a line between what is urgent and what is important may seem simple enough to understand, however we have a desire to avoid the difficult question of do I really need to be doing this?

What is the difference between what is urgent and what is important?

• Urgent Tasks: Demand your attention right now. Examples include daily deadlines, emails from your boss, and full-blown crisis situations.

• Important Tasks: Contribute to your long-term goals. Examples include organizational goals, advancing your career, staying healthy, long-term planning, and personal development.

What are the most important goals? What specific tasks do you need to focus on to align with those goals? Avoid creating a false sense of urgency around completing tasks that aren’t influencing progress on long-term goals. Align with strategy and goals by focusing on spending the majority of time on important tasks. Proper scheduling in advance can reduce the number of tasks that pop up and seem urgent.

Determine what’s really urgent:

Conduct a detailed audit on how your time is being spent.

• Be as detailed as possible: How much time are you spending on work versus personal activities? How much time is spent on email? On face-to-face communication and relationship building? Where is the majority of your time being spent?

• Conduct this audit for a month or longer to get accurate information. By analyzing where you spend your time, identify what goal you are working towards. Is that the goal you intended to be working for?

Define what actions align with the goals you are trying to achieve.

• Remember the 80/20 Rule.

• Your goals should be aligned with the strategic plan of the organization.

• Be clear on what priorities produce most of the results.

Schedule your time in advance.

• Scheduling ahead through the next 90 days creates focus and aligns your tasks to your goals.

• Be proactive, delegate any unimportant tasks before they become urgent.

• Schedule more one-to-one connections that build relationships and lead to more opportunities for delegating.

• Use your calendar to organize your schedule and put everything on it, mark busy for any blocks of time you do not want to be disturbed.

• Ask yourself: What can I do now to make sure my future self does the right thing?

• Identify your Most Important Task (MIT) and work on it for two hours each morning.

• Group similar tasks together during the day.

Implement, analyze, repeat.

• Complete full tasks on your calendar, that way you won’t leave half-finished tasks to pop up and surprise you later.

• Continue tracking and auditing the way your time is spent to adjust for better alignment to goals.