Importance and urgency, Eisenhower's principle

There is a never ending set of tasks that will ask for your attention. A great way to work out where to put your effort is to use Eisenhower's principle to rate tasks depending on importance and urgency and then deal with them accordingly.

Important things are important for getting closer to your goals. These things tend to be more long term but there are exceptions. The more things you can remove from the scale of important the more focused your efforts will be.

Urgent things tend to be imposed by external factors, but can also be things that you could have anticipated but didn't. Urgent things tend to require a lot of attention and a single or a few errors can bring everything else to a halt. The less urgent things you need to handle the less stressful your work will be.

Eisenhower's principle is to deal with these issues according to the following priority:

1. Important and urgent, just do it! Delaying these typically makes the situation worse or has some other cost associated.
2. Important but not urgent, set aside plenty of time for this, as these tasks lead to long term rewards.
3. Urgent but not important, consider if these are really for you or if you can get help to get this done. These tasks are usually very important to someone else, but you also need to make sure that you are not saying yes to everything. High stress can lead to over prioritizing these at the expense of important things which can easily become a situation hard to get out of.
4. Neither urgent nor important, don't do it! Unless you have nothing important to do these tasks should be avoided at any cost.