Over the coming weeks I’ll be writing a lot about various aspects of the Eisenhower Matrix, this post is part of that string of posts
The Eisenhower Matrix has two main dimensions, the urgency axis and the importance axis. To understand how to decide whether something is urgent or not, I’m going to dive into the dimension of Urgency in this post. Urgency is a dimension that’s time-related. Something can get urgent for a couple of reasons, but the main characteristic is that you need to give it attention NOW or at least on a short notice. If you don’t things go wrong or you’ll get in trouble.
Basically there are four types of urgent:
- Procratinated urgency
- Unexpected urgency
- Stealthy urgency
- Implied urgency
Procrastined urgency
These are the deadlines that are around the corner. They create urgency, because the deadline is coming closer, whether you like it or not, and you still need to do work to meet the requirements for the deadline. There’s urgency right there.
Most of the times however, this urgency is mostly caused by procrastination. People have a tendency to procrastinate work, especially if they don’t particularly like the work. That procrastination invokes a sense of urgency as soon as the time gap between the present and the deadline gets close to the amount of work that still needs to be done.
Time to deadline >>> estimated work left -> very high risk of procrastination
Time to deadline >> estimated work left -> deadline comfortably in the distance
Time to deadline > estimated work left -> first sense of urgency
Time to deadline = estimated work left -> high urgency
Time to deadline < estimated work left -> stress + poor quality
Time to deadline << estimated work left -> forget it, you’re busted
Common examples are your taxwork, handing in reports, sending in articles to magazines and so on. They’re hardly ever urgent when the deadline is set, because usually there’s ample time to get the job done. But if you wait long enough, the urgency kicks in.
Unexpected urgency
This is a type of urgency that doesn’t give an early warning. Suddenly it’s there as an interruption of what you were doing, or what you were planning to do. Something happens, and that something requires your immediate attention.
Some examples of events with this type of urgency are when you’re involved in traffic accident for instance, or when one of your kids just puked all over his bed. It’s the type of event that forces you to drop everything else, and give immediate attention to.
Stealthy urgency
The third category is a type of urgency that sneaks up on you if you ignore it. It’s not related to deadlines, and it’s not an interruption. This is the kind of urgency that evolves from neglect or from spending too little attention to certain things.
This one happens both in the material world as in the emotional world. In the material world for instance, neglecting to do maintenance work to your roof will lead to an urgency when the roof starts leaking (usually during a massive rain storm).
In the emotional world this kind of urgency can occur when you’ve spent too little time with people that matter for instance. It’s what the song “Cats in the cradle” is all about.
This stealthy urgency is a tough category, because you could’ve known it was coming, yet you didn’t recognize it or even ignored the early warning signs (hence stealthy).
Implied urgency
Implied urgency is something we all recognize, but somehow we never really see it as something with an urgency factor. Implied urgency is associated with the activities that would create (close to) immediate urgency if we decide NOT to do them.
For most people this is true for their jobs. If you decide to quit your job today, you create an immediate urgency on the financial aspect of your life. Your mortgage or rent, the utility-bills, taxes, the groceries, and many many more will not cease to exist instantly. So quitting your job creates an urgent gap between your cash coming in, and your cash flowing out.
It’s this implied urgency that we all feel when faced with these kinds of decisions. If quitting an activity creates more urgent activities than the amount of activities your quitting, you’re dealing with an activity with implied urgency.
