Urgent or Important? The Decision That Builds or Breaks Your Business.

90% of managers spend their days firefighting instead of building the future. Which side are you on?

90% of managers spend their days firefighting instead of moving the business forward. The difference between chaos and progress comes down to one skill. Are you part of the 10%? 

We created a quick test to challenge your knowledge on priority. Understanding this deceivingly simple skill is the difference between being busy but wasting time on low-value work and having time to execute the strategy. First the quick 5 question test, then we’ll get into answers and why it matters.

Priority test (5 questions)

Question 1: What does priority really mean?

Question 2: Which of these is the best way to set a real priority?

Question 3: What’s the difference in revenues between a company that focuses on clear strategic priority vs. trying to do everything at once, over 5 years with a €10M revenues starting point?

Question 4: True or false. If everything is a priority, then nothing is.

Question 5: What happens to productivity when you have multiple priorities?

How did you do on the test? Check the correct answers below, and then we will dive into each of them in detail. 

Correct answers: 1C, 2B, 3C, 4A, 5C. 

The origin of the word “priority”, first used in English around the 14th century, meant the state of being earlier or preceding in importance or rank. It was used in singular. Only as recently as the 20th century using ‘priorities’ in the plural version became popularised. 

And this is where things went wrong. By definition, priority was supposed to be the one thing that comes first before anything else. When we introduced multiple priorities, instead of reaching more goals faster, we ended up going backwards. Why? 

Mistaking urgency (def: the quality of needing attention immediately) with priority means time is being wasted doing tasks that have nothing to do with business growth. So what happens when the focus is on the urgent instead of priority? Targets are missed, people are busy overworked and burnout doing things that seem important, yet business doesn’t move forward. The biggest danger of urgency is that it masks true importance. Without clear priority it’s so hard to know what really matters and what only looks like it does. Something that feels urgent,  like an email, a request, or a last-minute task, demands your immediate attention and feels important, but that doesn’t mean it creates meaningful results. 

Mixing urgency with priority leads to the problem many leaders deal with: they are so focused on the day to day that they forget business is a long term game. And the real priority is the thing that has the biggest impact, especially long-term. It moves your goals, team, or business forward in a way that busywork never will. That’s why people in the C-suite spend so much time on crafting the right strategy. Because it matters. 

A big part of what separates the leadership from other employees is thinking about the long term consequences. Understanding the difference between urgency and priority will help you get back on track and elevate your leadership by redirecting your team to work that moves your business forward. And seeing it in retrospect is too late. 

We have hammered the point that urgency and priority are not the same. Now let’s understand how big of a difference that makes. In numbers. 

Example

There are two companies that start at the same revenue base: €10M in Year 0. 

Company A (Focused): chooses 1–2 clear priorities per year and executes them well.

Company B (Scattered): tries to chase everything urgent, constantly context-switching and reacting.

Focus and prioritization have an exponential effect on growth. They compound because good execution → better morale → better performance → higher retention → faster progress. So, let’s assume Company A grows revenues 15% per year, while Company B grows 2% per year, and reflect that in the table below.

After 5 years, the difference in revenues is €24.48 million. 

But that’s not even the final difference. Loss of focus doesn’t just slow revenue growth. It also means projects are significantly delayed or never finished, the additional expenses of misallocated talent/time, negative morale & increased turnover costs, automation or expansion delays impacting the potential revenue gains are causing the real difference to be much higher.

That is how over five years, a €10M company that focuses on clear, strategic priorities can outperform a reactive, unfocused competitor by more than €25 million in total output. Not from working harder, but from aligning better. 

It only highlights the truth of the statement: If everything is a priority, then nothing is.

Before we close on this topic let me explain the answer to the last question of our mini test “What happens to productivity when you have multiple priorities?”.

It’s proven scientifically that switching between multiple priorities drains your cognitive capacity, reducing output and decision quality dramatically. To put it simply: every time you switch tasks, your brain has to refocus, reorient, and reprocess where you left off. 

Research shows that this switching cost eats up 20–40% of your productive time if you juggle just two tasks. With more tasks or priorities, the mental load compounds, leading to productivity losses of up to 80% as attention is fragmented and nothing is completed with full clarity or excellence.

That’s the case not only for how we approach multitasking on a personal level, but also how we should approach multiple priorities on the business level. While the theory is all nice, we do live in a fast paced world where often it’s simply impossible to do only one thing at a time. Still, when creating strategies, we should limit ourselves to maximum 2-3 priorities per specific period of time. 

If you want to find out how much your multiple priorities are costing you, check out this tool that will help you sort out your priorities, organize your team’s tasks, and calculate how much time you are wasting by not having the right priorities. (link)

We live in the fast moving world, where it’s too easy to get overwhelmed with the urgent tasks. Having a clear priority will help you stay on track of your strategic goals, not only making your life easier, but also putting your business ahead of competition. While it may be tempting to give into the urgency, you need to remember that priority isn’t about choosing what to do today. It’s about protecting the future you’re building.

Choose wisely. Your future depends on it.

Until next time,

-A.