Disconnect urgency from importance – How to know when the time is ripe

Written in 2009. Updated in September 2026 — the world caught up with this one.

When it comes to time management, an important tool on the leader's belt is the ability to say 'no'.

Leaders are constantly surrounded with issues to be resolved, questions to be answered, advice to be given and major conflicts to be averted.

When I first wrote this, research showed that highly-paid executives in the U.S. worked, on average, 58 hours a week. Surprisingly enough, it was also known that executives complained of not having enough time for all their tasks. Over 3,000 hours per year should be more than enough! The picture has not improved since: in a November 2025 survey, 55% of the U.S. workforce reported burnout — and burned-out employees were nearly three times more likely to plan to leave their employer within a year.

Successful leaders know when to act and when to delegate. More importantly, a successful leader is able to determine what needs to be taken care of right now and what can be taken care of a little later.

The Book of Ecclesiastes was already teaching this principle more than two thousand years ago: "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven."

One might argue we live in a different age than Solomon. "We live in the age of now", I have heard said many times. The 'now' is what matters, that is absolutely true. If one can't manage his own present tasks, it's likely that tasks planned for the future won't be properly managed either. Indeed, the importance of 'now' should be motivation enough to grant the ability to say 'no' to things that are less critical, in order to protect tasks that are truly at hand now.

One of the things a leader must identify is: is it the right time for the task? Is it something that must be dealt with now? Or can it wait? Identifying the right time for a certain task is an art in itself. The key to its mastery is to disconnect urgency from importance. Contrary to what many think, urgency does not necessarily denote importance. There are activities which are drastically more important than some urgent ones.

Maybe I can elucidate this with an example from personal experience. I used to have a boss who would call me to his room at least 5 times a day. He always had an Urgent request (with a capital U). His requests always came accompanied by the saying "this is for yesterday" (yes, he would even bend the rules of language and the physical flow of time to express his urgency).

Not surprisingly, I was unable to resolve all his requests — not only for the rather impossible timelines imposed on the tasks — but I quickly realized that 'urgent' did not mean 'important' to him. When I would notice that some of his Urgent requests were not aligned with our company strategy, I would present him with options: "Should I continue doing A, which leads to our targets, or drop it and jump into B, which you have just expressed as being urgent?" His answer would invariably be for me to continue with the 'important' activity (A), instead of the new 'urgent' one (B).

Science caught up with the lesson

What I did not know back then is that this trap has a name. Psychologists call it the mere urgency effect: in a 2018 study, Meng Zhu, Yang Yang and Christopher Hsee showed that people systematically pick urgent tasks over more important ones — even when the urgent task pays less and the deadline is completely arbitrary. Urgency feels like importance. It is a trick our brain plays on us.

Managers know the matrix version of the same idea, usually attributed to Eisenhower: important and urgent, important and not urgent, urgent and not important, neither. Most of leadership is about living in the second box and refusing to be dragged into the third.

The age of now, upgraded

In 2009 an Urgent request arrived by being summoned to the boss's office. Today it arrives as a red badge: Slack, Teams, a phone that never stops. The factory of urgency has been industrialized.

The results are everywhere. Silicon Valley AI startups now openly demand "996" schedules — 9am to 9pm, six days a week — the very schedule China's courts ruled illegal back in 2021. Research cited in the same report found that a 70-hour worker produces almost no more than a 50-hour one. The urgent keeps winning over the important, now at industrial scale.

What do we take home from this lesson? Before acting upon any task, you should always ask yourself: is it really important? Will it really put our company on the right track? Will it enhance our working environment? If you feel unsure about the answers or it's a 'no' for any of them, then you might just have to say 'no' to the task itself.

The tools have changed. The lesson has not.