Urgency or Impact? You Decide.

I don’t wake up short on things to do. You probably don’t either.

When I’m disciplined, my day starts with coffee, an hour of movement, and daily devotion. That’s before I even glance at my calendar.

Then I open it.

Meetings. Marketing. Follow-ups. Program development. A few strategic decisions that actually matter. And somewhere in there, at least one text from a son who forgot something he absolutely needs today.

By 9:07 a.m., something urgent is already trying to outrank everything else.

An email marked high priority.
A client request that feels time-sensitive.
A small issue that suddenly wants to be a big one.

Most of it is legitimate.

And when everything is pressing, urgency has a way of sneaking in and claiming the top spot. Loudly.

Once it does, meaningful work — the kind that actually moves the needle — gets pushed to “later.”

Tackling urgency feels responsible.

It tricks us into confusing motion with progress.

The thing that actually moves things forward is impact.

Why Urgent Keeps Winning

Urgency carries a false authority.

It implies that something must be handled immediately, and when we care about being responsive and reliable leaders, that’s hard to ignore.

The trouble is that urgency doesn’t care where you’re headed. It just wants attention.

So we spend our days reacting, resolving, and responding, only to wonder why the bigger, more powerful work never quite moves forward.

That’s not a motivation issue. It’s a prioritization issue.

A Different Question

So the real question isn’t, “How do I get more done?”
It’s, “How do I decide what actually deserves to be done first?”

I’ve been sitting with an idea from The One Thing by Gary Keller that keeps resurfacing for me:

When there are many things to do, do the one thing that makes everything else easier or unnecessary.

That sentence sounds simple, but it introduces a different kind of decision.

Instead of asking what’s most urgent, it asks you to look for impact.

Impact moves you towards your goals

Urgency keeps you trapped in the moment.

How This Shows Up in Real Life

Thanks to a wise friend, I use the Eisenhower Matrix to keep track of what needs my attention. It helps me separate what’s urgent from what’s important and gives me a visual way to see where my time is actually going.

The discipline isn’t in having the matrix. It’s in how I use it.

I keep my urgent and important list intentionally small—three items at a time. That’s it.

When one gets crossed off (glory be), I earn the right to move something else into that quadrant. Not before.

There’s always more that could qualify as urgent.
There’s always more that feels important.

But if everything gets access to that top quadrant, then nothing truly is.

There’s also the not urgent / not important quadrant.

Once things land there, they’re on the other side of my time boundary. Out of sight. Out of mind. And that’s by design.

Here’s the key shift.

When it’s time to refill the urgent-and-important bucket, I don’t ask what’s yelling the loudest. I ask:

What’s the one thing I could prioritize that would make everything else easier?

That question pulls me out of reaction mode and back into intention.

It reconnects me to my most important goal instead of letting urgency redefine it.

Why This Works

The right decision now can save you from ten decisions later.

It simplifies follow-ups, clarifies next steps, and lowers the overall load instead of adding to it.

This is why leaders who “move the needle” aren’t doing more. They’re choosing the work that has the greatest impact first.

💡 Try it

Before starting to tackle your to-do list, ask: Which one thing, if completed, would make the rest of this list easier—or unnecessary?

Now, do that first, even if something else feels more urgent.

That’s it.

No new system.

Just one deliberate choice for impact over urgency.

Urgency will always show up. The work is learning not to let it decide. That’s how busy weeks turn into impactful ones.

To choosing impact on purpose,

Laurie