If It’s Urgent, Ignore It

That’s the title of an article I recently came across again in my files, from a couple years ago in Fast Company. Sure, that’s a bit of an overstatement, but it’s actually a pretty good principle.

Here’s what it says:

Smart organizations ignore the urgent and focus on the important.

Is it realistic to ignore the urgent, though? Well, here’s the problem: Focusing on the urgent just causes more urgent things to come up. The only way to really minimize the appearance of the urgent is to focus on the important:

Smart organizations understand that important issues are the ones to deal with. If you focus on the important stuff, the urgent will take care of itself.

Ignore the urgent so that you can do the important things that are necessary to make the urgent fires stop happening in the first place.

Read the whole thing.

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March 9, 2009 | Filed Under Planning | 1 Comment 

Comments

One Response to “If It’s Urgent, Ignore It”

  1. Bryan DeWire on March 9th, 2009 3:12 pm

    Man, this is hard to think about as an assistant in regards to when a director comes to me with an urgent job. It’d be good to think long and hard about the truth behind your post, though.

    Fortunately, my bosses have a good balance in trusting me to use judgment regarding urgent and important matters (in my opinion).

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