Have you ever fallen into the urgency trap?

This is the mode of thinking where we believe the most important thing to attend to is the latest and loudest item. Whether it comes from people demanding your time or a frantic email from your boss, it is all too easy to default focus to the item that everyone is worried about. However, does tending constantly to the most recent item lead to problems down the road?

In a classic David Allen article called The Curse of the Eternally Urgent, he starts out by clearly stating why ignoring seemingly unimportant items can backfire down the road.

Ignoring secondarily important actions and projects because you are too busy and concerned with urgent things fosters continual crisis management. It never self-corrects; it self-perpetuates. Where do fires and crises come from? Usually from not-so-urgent things that people ignore because they are distracted by the crises of the moment. Then, ignored, they cause the next fires and crises.

One of the paths forward is to use the famous two-minute rule. It is the idea that if something can be done in under two minutes then do it right away. Storing it for later is a counterproductive strategy that costs more time in the long run. Surprising, Allen has heard criticism of this simple rule, for which he has a straightforward response.

Someone heard second hand about my “two-minute rule” (if the action on something takes less than two minutes, do it as soon as you look at or think of it) and thought it was ineffective. “I’d waste my whole day doing two-minute things, many of which are not that important.” My retort was: if they’re not important enough to do, they’re not important enough to do at all! You’re either going to do something or you’re not. If you’re going to do it at all, and it takes less than two minutes, 95% of the time you’ll save time and be much more proactive if you do it immediately.

To learn more about avoiding “The Curse of the Eternally Urgent”, please read the rest of the article.