How many of us have heard the endless discussions about Priority vs Urgency or Importance vs Urgency? Ah, the Eisenhower Matrix—the every manager's favourite prioritisation framework! Even if you haven't heard of it, look it up. Chances are, you've used it. Every quarter, every half-year, there’s the ritual of pulling it out, plotting tasks into neat little quadrants, and then sitting back as though everything is now perfectly sorted. Done! We know exactly what we need to do... for the next 2 weeks.
Here’s the thing... life, work, and teams are rarely so simple. Plans change, the unexpected happens, and suddenly the perfect matrix becomes obsolete, leaving everyone scrambling to adapt. The Eisenhower Matrix is brilliant because it works, but like any tool, it’s only as effective as how we apply it.
Do any of these scenarios sound familiar:
Ultimately the Eisenhower Matrix is great because it works. But it is often used in ways that are not robust to changes in life, priorities, or the world in general, because it removes nuance that would empower the people involved to adapt to shifts. In my experience we usually apply it at the macro scale, and in day to day life, when everything speeds past us faster than we can register at times0 we rarely have time to stop and think to remind ourselves of what was really important. In my line of work the most common place I have seen people get stuck is in the urgent but not important quadrant.
We define important usually as: what is the impact of doing this? And then we quantify how important the task is based on how desirable the outcome is.
However, most commonly I see urgent more commonly defined as "When do we have to get this done by? Soon?". One is a measure of impact, the other is a measure of time. We often say "We need this!" and rarely ask "Or what?".
We naturally try to compare apples to apples, so we end up deprioritising important tasks just because their deadline is usually far in the future, if one exists at all. So let's try another way. I offer this potential reframe of urgency instead: What is the impact of not doing this? Then quantify the task based on how undesirable the outcome is.
Bonus: notice how in this reframe when we present the task it transforms from "I do this because I need to" to "I am doing this because I don't want ______ to happen". In psychology this is defined as cognitive reframing. This concept is deeply rooted in Self Determination Theory and is linked with greater motivation and improved wellbeing1.
Yes, a large element of felt urgency is related to deadlines we set on specific tasks. These deadlines are hard (filing a tax return) or soft (when we agreed with our manager we would deliver a project). These sometimes arbitrary times can blind us to the actual urgency of a task.
Let me ask you this. You have a meeting in your calendar in 1 hour. Is that meeting urgent? Maybe, depends on what the meeting is about. Right? It has nothing to do with when the meeting has to happen. The meeting itself is scheduled in the calendar. It may or may not be re-schedule-able depending on circumstances, or if given enough notice. But ultimately it is a matter of scheduling.
So, let me ask you this. Why are tasks different? If you saw deadlines for tasks entirely as a function of when to schedule the work for the task, does the deadline have as much impact on the actual urgency of the task?4
For the tasks that are urgent and important/fun, we may find ourselves doing them way before the deadline. It's the ones that are not that sometimes we feel more urgent towards, especially if we've procrastinated them until the deadline (see taxes...). Ultimately use the tool that helps you, if that is to set a reminder for a specific date, or put a meeting block in your calendar to do it.
Having worked in DevOps, as a Release Engineer and as an SRE, the sense of urgency was what drove a lot of people. And at times it seemed like there was not much work getting done around me, yet we were always busy. People were often demoralised and felt a sense of disempowerment. I felt it too. I was burning out.
What I needed, was a mindset shift. This particular way of thinking is what helped me the most. Sometimes people want you to feel a sense of urgency. Thing is, that is when you're easiest to control5. It is easy to feel like you're dealing with the most urgent thing on the planet when you're "oncall" and your service is throwing all the red alerts, and even easier to forget that the total number of people affected are the 20 engineers that are currently awake in your timezone. Been guilty of this myself.
How does this reframe make you think about the tasks currently on your plate? I personally found this very useful, and I hope you do too.
0 You can see I worked in big tech and startups.
1 If you want to read more, the best place I have seen this described is in Marshall B. Rosenberg's "Non-violent communication".
2 Please, ignore this evaluation if you are someone important, like a doctor, and not a silly software engineer like myself.
3 Yes, surprisingly, CPR is not as effective as they make it out to be in the movies. It has an actual fairly low success rate of 10% out of hospitals, or 21% within Hospitals. Source
4 Provided there is enough time to do the task. If you don't, what we are describing as a sense of urgency is probably distress.
5 For more information I recommend Robert Cialdini's "Influence".