Important But Not Urgent Quotes

#1. Sidney had never been very good at differentiating between tasks that were urgent and those which were important, and often those tasks that seemed urgent, but were not important, took precedence over the duties that were important, but not urgent.

James Runcie

#2. As we don't live in a perfect world, try to spend 80% of your time doing important but not urgent activities

Eddie De Jong

#3. It's all too easy to fall hostage to the urgent over the important.

Herminia Ibarra

#4. You must create more margin so you have room for what's important, not merely urgent.

Michael Hyatt

#5. You must distinguish between what is urgent and what is important. You could accomplish all of the urgent things that you desire without accomplishing anything that is important.

Gary Zukav

#6. Progress is more of a challenge for the cynic but also more important and urgent, since for the optimist things aren't that bad and are bound to get better anyway.

Julian Baggini

#7. Because, as we all know, it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking. And it's also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we're not so sure about.

John Cleese

#8. I have always learned to distinguish the important from the urgent.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery

#9. Most things which are urgent are not important, and most things which are important are not urgent.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#10. What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

#11. Any email that contains the words 'important' or 'urgent' never are, and annoy me to the point of not replying out of principle.

Markus Persson

#12. The most important and urgent appeal we have to make is for an immediate cease-fire. Initial reports from the cease-fire talks being held in N'Djamena in Chad are not very encouraging.

Jan Egeland

#13. Never let something important become urgent

Eliyahu M. Goldratt

#14. There is an urgent need for a protective Ebola vaccine, and it is important to establish that a vaccine is safe and spurs the immune system to react in a way necessary to protect against infection.

Anthony Fauci

#15. Never put aside important things for urgent things.

Sunday Adelaja

#16. Jesus knew the difference between urgent and important. He understood that all the good things he could do were not necessarily the things he ought to do.

Kevin DeYoung

#17. When the urgent crowds out the important, people urgently accomplish nothing of value.

Orrin Woodward

#18. When you have a lot of goals to accomplish, it is very important you do your own "Kaizin". Shift those that are unnecessary now to the following day and carefully deal with a bigger task in smaller bits

Israelmore Ayivor

#19. Prioritize activities under the captions "important" and "urgent". Do the urgent things first and the important things later.

Israelmore Ayivor

#20. Goals help you keep in perspective what's really important so you don't spend all of your time doing what seems urgent.

Nido R. Qubein

#21. The Principle of Priority states (a) you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important, and (b) you must do what's important first.

Steven Pressfield

#22. I would have dismissed [the email] as spam, except for the first word: urgent. People stopped flinging that word around like confetti after the Rising. Somehow, the potential for missing the message that zombies just ate your mom made offering to give people a bigger dick seem less important.

Mira Grant

#23. Where you are headed is more important than how fast you are going. Rather than always focusing on what's urgent, learn to focus on what is really important.

Stephen Covey

#24. Concentrate on what is important, not what is urgent.

Debasish Mridha

#25. A moral dilemma can be large or small, important or inconsequential, urgent or secondary. One thing is certain: moral dilemmas are ever present.

Michael J. Marx

#26. Green production is certainly an important topic for newspapers. Environmental considerations are part of every enquiry today and come into most aspects of equipment specification. On balance, however, cost-effectiveness is a more urgent requirement for most print organisations.

Eric Bell

#27. I have the distinct feeling that when I'm old, and I look back on my life, my thirties will be one huge blur. There's a lot that gets neglected: exercise, dishes, laundry, my poor garden. I try to prioritize the important but non-urgent things over the unimportant but urgent things.

Rebecca Makkai

#28. The urgent can drown out the important.

David Meerman Scott

#29. Most people spend their time on the 'urgent' rather than on the 'important.'

Robert M. Hutchins

#30. Do you really want to waste your precious time doing things that are neither important nor urgent?

Eddie De Jong

#31. If you have urgent current expenses to cover, then future priorities like college and retirement fall off your radar because they are simply less pressing. Scarcity of attention prevents us from seeing what's really important. The psychology of scarcity engrosses us in only our present needs.

Sendhil Mullainathan

#32. I am fortunate to have a very helpful team that enables me to spend time doing things that are important but not necessarily urgent. People who have no such team need to also make these larger decisions so that they can cheerfully say No to that which is urgent but not important.

Stephen Covey

#33. What is urgent will always take precedence over what is important.

Edward De Bono

#34. When everything feels urgent and important, everything seems equal. We become active and busy, but this doesn't actually move us any closer to success. Activity is often unrelated to productivity, and busyness rarely takes care of business.

Gary Keller

#35. An effective leader must step back, look at the big picture, and make sure the important things are not being pushed out of the way by the seemingly urgent needs of the moment.

Kenneth H. Blanchard

#36. Don't let the urgent get in the way of the important

Kay Yow