The Urgent Is Hardly Ever Important

In 1954, Dwight Eisenhower — who before being president was the general who organised the Normandy landings — quoted in a speech the words of an old university president: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent."

From there came the matrix that bears his name: for any task, two questions. Is it urgent? Is it important? Four drawers appear: the urgent and important gets done now; the important without hurry gets scheduled; the urgent without importance gets delegated or shrunk; what is neither gets dropped without guilt.

The trap it exposes is this: the important almost never shouts. Looking after your health, learning something, the conversation you've been postponing for months: none of that buzzes in your pocket. The urgent, on the other hand, always arrives with its own ringtone, which is why it wins on every day you don't decide yourself.

The practical application fits in one rule: set aside, every day, a slot with a name and an hour for something important-but-not-urgent, before opening the urgent drawer. It's the only drawer that, if you don't open it, nobody will.