Harvard Business Review Guides Ultimate Boxed Set (16 Books)

Chapter 11

How to Stay Focused on What’s Important

by Gina Trapani

Most of us spend our workdays in one of two ways: reacting to urgent demands, or proactively focusing on what we decided ahead of time are our most critical tasks to accomplish. The best way to be productive is to mitigate the urgent to work on the important.

What’s the difference between urgent and important?

“Urgent” tasks include things like:

• Frantic e-mails that need a response “right now”
• Sudden requests that seem like they’ll take only two minutes but instead take an hour
• Putting out fires—especially others’
• Fixing the day’s crisis rather than stepping back to consider what will solve the chronic problem
• Tasks you’d rather do first because they’re less intimidating than ...