From Oliver Burkeman's newsletter The Imperfectionist titled "Urgency Doesn't Exist," this part about the notion of how "urgent tasks" rule our day. Very often things are "urgent" because of someone else's priorities. That's not unimportant... but it shouldn't rule our day.
The way through this muddle begins, I think, by seeing that what we call “urgency” is actually just another kind of importance – not some separate, stress-inducing quality that attaches itself to certain tasks, demanding their immediate completion. And definitely, time-sensitivity is one of the factors that can make a task worth prioritising. Deadlines do matter, whether you’re paying a bill, launching a product, buying a birthday present or leaving for the school run. But time-sensitivity is one factor among many. There’s no need to think of urgency as some uniquely powerful force that gets to muscle its way in front of everything else.
If this strikes you as a purely conceptual distinction, I can only respond that, for me, it’s been transformative. It helps me see the truth of my situation, which is that every day, when I wake up, there are thousands upon thousands of genuinely important ways I could spend my day – certainly incalculably more than I’ll have time for. So much matters! Meaningful work matters. My relationships with my wife and son and friends matter. Paying the bills matters. Cleaning the house matters. Rest matters. Fun matters.
And somehow, the sheer overwhelming number of things that matter has the effect of cutting “urgency” down to size. Because I’m finite, my task for the day can only possibly be to do a few things that matter. Inevitably, a far greater number of things that matter will fall by the wayside – doubtless including a few that derived their importance from their time-sensitivity.
Oh well: such is the human condition.
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