Do What’s Urgent, Skip What’s Important - The Urgency Trap
Anxiety as the source of urgency
The idea we have of urgency is often driven by personal anxiety. So we offload our anxieties to the next person in the office because keeping our anxiety to ourselves is uncomfortable. Many things we deem urgent are not truly urgent — but feel urgent because anxiety and fear of failure are uncomfortable to sit with.
The mere urgency effect (Zhu et al., 2018) explains that we tend to place more value on tasks that are perceived as urgent (time-sensitive) as opposed to the ones that are important (less time-sensitive). That’s because many of the times, tasks that we perceive as “urgent” are well-defined and actionable, which is not the case for medium-long-term “important” endeavors. In addition, the perception of immediate urgency fosters action, as opposed to planning.
At a practical level, the urgency vs. importance conundrum has been discussed for many decades in the productivity space. The Eisenhower matrix is one of the tools that are often suggested to prioritize tasks and define their urgency and importance. While such a technique can be invaluable for the examined mind, it’s a cherry (a hack) that doesn’t have a cake. Testing hacks for defining the urgency and importance of a task is beneficial only if you first inquire deeply enough to find out the “cake”, on top of which you can then place as many cherries as you wish.
When it comes to urgency, the “cake” seems to be psychological rather than practical. To avoid the constant offload of your anxiety to the next person in the room, you first need to do self-work that allows you to uncover your inner state of being. So that you can understand where your anxiety may stem from, and then work carefully and light-heartedly to prepare your own cure. In an organizational context, the “cure” may start from each individual (including you) but will need to also originate from the organization itself—through the cultural systems it puts in place.
“Pay attention, and be a good person”
Do like Basecamp—strive to do like Basecamp strives to do. Even if it’s merely idealistic, seek to protect your time and attention as if you were the last person on Earth and those assets were to help you survive. We are in the attention economy era. Everyone is seeking each other’s attention. Your partner is striving for your attention. Your favorite YouTuber is striving for your attention. Reporters are striving to get a pie of your attention. Your work tasks are striving to get a slice of your attention pie.
And you are sitting there, at the center of the attention tree. You can decide how to process attention and what to do about it. I would argue that one of the most effective things you can do to improve your well-being is to protect your limited attention and energy. You can do so by picking carefully what you give your attention to. Select those things, and deviate from them deliberately only when you intend to do so.
In the work context, the highest value decision you can make is to commit to at least 2 hours of uninterrupted work per day. Uninterrupted work means no inbox or Slack open on the side. It means picking 2-3 clear tasks—or even 1—and doing them. That’s it. Once you get those bare minimum 2 hours of uninterrupted work, you can do what you wish with the rest of the time. 2 hours of truly uninterrupted work correspond to more than 4 hours of work in the status quo way of doing knowledge work in our time.
That’s because the default way of doing work is hyperactive hive mind, which means offloading any of your anxieties onto other people at any time. So that you feel more at peace with yourself before the “anxiety ball” you offloaded comes back to you in the instant-messaging ping-pong game.
Consider this: your well-being is more important than other people’s well-being. Not in a narcissistic way, but practically speaking. If you want to help others, you need to help yourself first. By protecting your attention and energy, you are making a favor to yourself. By internalizing the belief that uninterrupted work is what contributes to a deeper existence, you can increase your well-being. In turn, this will make you a more integrated human being.
“This is utopian and unrealistic for me”
While reflecting on the thesis for this essay, some doubts and counterarguments popped into my mind at times. Doubts of the validity of the argument laid out above. So, here are some counterarguments you may have, and how I would address them.
such a concept of doing deep work and not keeping inboxes open is great theoretically, but not practical at all in real life
This way of working is not applicable to everyone. It is especially geared toward knowledge workers who are not in customer support or similar roles.
Why are you raising this point? What makes you think this is not practical? Since I can’t get live answers from you, I’ll analyze my own reasons for believing that the non-hyperactive approach to work is not practical. For one, it seems that when you join an organization, you are implicitly expected to use your inbox as the main source of collaboration—not merely communication. Such a state of things is determined by the culture and principles of the organization you are part of. The more deeply rooted, the harder to eradicate. The number of organizations that truly thought through their way of collaborating and articulated their vision clearly are the minority.
Defaulting to the use of instant messaging as a collaboration tool is less cognitively loading than thinking through a collaboration system that optimizes uninterrupted time and attention. The latter requires an internalization of the belief that uninterrupted work is truly beneficial; letting go of all the peer pressure from the status quo around you; the buy-in of every knowledge worker in your organization; the embodiment of your focus-centered way of working on a daily basis; the effective management of everyone’s expectations. Those are demanding issues that you would need to think through carefully. Their reward in productivity and well-being improvements can be immeasurable. But articulating them and embedding them in the culture is a demanding job.
If you still feel like a hyperactive hive mind is an appropriate way of collaborating and are happy with it, then maybe those principles do not apply to you—and that is fine because thinking for yourself is a much better strategy than following others’ opinions merely because they are trendy.
what if there is something truly urgent? How do I deal with that if I’m not reachable at all times?
Something truly urgent will occur less than 10% of the time (this is a percentage I made up that is based on the Pareto principle—since urgency is truly rare, especially in knowledge work). When developing and articulating your culture about work, you will also need to account for those edge cases. What happens when something truly urgent comes up? What is “urgent” in the first place? How can accountable people be contacted if something truly urgent happens? Those questions will need to be addressed, especially if you want to make yourself and everyone working with you more confident and calm about your work culture.
On a more personal level, if you are feeling like you are letting people down if you are not reachable at any time and fear “urgency”, consider this: your attention and ability to focus are more important than pleasing others or “missing out” on the latest “urgent” news. You are more important than others. Focus on yourself first if you intend to serve others with the necessary attention. You are part of a tribe, and it is natural to feel like you may not belong if you are not reachable at all times. If this makes you feel better, you can develop your own system to be reached in case of urgency, and communicate it to everyone around you. Maybe people can call you on the phone only when something is urgent (define “urgent” first). Or they could knock at your office door.
not being reachable at all times makes me feel anxious because I fear that someone may be asking for my attention and I’m not there for them.
Check your messaging tools, at regular intervals. Messaging tools are valuable for communication exchanges (that’s what they are for) and I’m not proposing that they be discarded. If you work with other people and they often need your input, you can set up a system and clear expectations on how that works. For example, you may make it a routine to check your inbox once every 2 hours. Then you follow such a routine, and after you check your inbox and process new messages, you get out of there and continue with your schedule.
A system and clear expectations can improve your life in the long term. And if your organization requires everyone to always be reachable, then it’s a cultural thing. If you’re in a leadership position, you may be the one who can reflect on how you’re doing things at the moment, and whether there’s an alternative that can make everyone more intentional with their time.
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List of Resources
Zhu, M., Yang, Y., & Hsee, C. K. (2018). The Mere Urgency Effect. Journal of Consumer Research. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucy008
