Priorities - Do you know the 4 quadrants about important and urgent tasks?

Most people do the urgent stuff and then have less time for the important stuff. Let's say you receive 2 emails... one email to fix your timesheets and another to change the logo on the home page. How do you work out what is more important?

There is a well-known quadrant where people look at where they spend their time. The key is to reduce burning time on 'urgent and not important' stuff (e.g. most notifications on your phone and most Teams calls) and spend time on the important stuff that is not urgent (e.g. stuff at the top of our backlog).

Figure: The decision-making 4 quadrants

Image: Davidjcmorris, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Understanding the difference between urgent and important tasks in software development is crucial:

• Urgent tasks are driven by external deadlines and often require immediate attention to meet project milestones or resolve critical issues
• Important tasks may not have immediate deadlines but have a significant impact on the project's success, such as planning architecture, conducting thorough testing, or implementing essential features