Urgent vs. Important: Learning to Prioritize

Description

In a 1954 speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was quoting Dr J. Roscoe Miller, president of Northwestern University, said: “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.” We must spend our time on things that are important and not just the ones that are urgent. To do this, and to minimize the stress of having too many tight deadlines, we need to understand this distinction. This curriculum will help you understand the pressures and expectations—both from ourselves and others—inherent in prioritizing our work; and learn to navigate the myriad of possible actions, pushing that which is both URGENT and IMPORTANT to the fore.