Not every task with a deadline is very important.
On the other hand, many important tasks don’t have a hard deadline.
How do you balance between tasks that need to be completed quickly and others that are larger, longer, and more impactful for the business?
This is a super common problem for developer teams. Urgent, ad-hoc tasks constantly delay/deprioritize bigger goals. Developers have to jump out of the bigger task context to focus on something new, usually urgent.
The urgent-important spectrum
When small, timely tasks interrupt the larger goal, you have an urgent vs important problem.
Engineering (and product) teams need to do better at realizing which tasks are urgent, which are important, and which are both urgent and important. Then, you can triage.
- Some tasks are urgent & important. Obviously, do those first.
- Some tasks are important, but not that urgent. Be careful to not deprioritize these!
- Some tasks are urgent, but not that important. Make sure you push back on urgent requests that don't have a clear end goal.
- Some tasks are neither urgent nor important. Avoid these. There are better ways to use your energy.
Every task falls somewhere on this spectrum. As an engineer, you should uncover & understand whether the tasks you're completing are urgent, important, both, or neither.