Urgency and importance: making trade-offs visible
In SHR — Swiss Human Resources' “Time Management & Prioritisation” programme, distinguishing urgency from importance deserves more than a general instruction. The managerial question is specific: how can we prevent an imminent deadline from displacing more valuable work without neglecting genuine operational constraints?
What the literature establishes
Meng Zhu, Yang Yang and Christopher K. Hsee (2018, Journal of Consumer Research) identified a “mere urgency effect”: in their experiments, an artificially shortened deadline can steer people towards a task with a lower monetary reward. Apparent urgency therefore influences the allocation of effort beyond the value of the outcome. This does not mean that every urgent task is secondary, but that its deadline can become an excessively salient choice criterion.
A complementary mechanism: goals direct attention
Edwin A. Locke and Gary P. Latham (2002, American Psychologist) synthesise research showing, among other findings, that goals direct attention and effort towards relevant activities. Specific, challenging goals can support performance under certain conditions, including commitment, feedback and the necessary abilities. One plausible managerial implication is to make the priority outcome explicit rather than allowing deadlines alone to structure choices.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that important work should always take precedence over urgent work. That would overlook the fact that a deadline can represent a major consequence: food safety, a production stoppage or a commitment to a university partner. A useful trade-off concerns what will actually be lost by postponing a task, rather than an abstract opposition between two labels. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot decide
The mere urgency experiments involve controlled choices whose rewards and deadlines do not reproduce all the interdependencies of collaborative work. The goal-setting review does not, by itself, validate a universal method for ranking tasks. An urgency–importance matrix therefore remains a discussion aid, not an objective measure of the value of work.
A practical check in Fribourg
In Fribourg, SHR can invite teams in agri-food businesses, bilingual industry and the university sector to log priority changes over two weeks. For each request that displaces planned work, record the requested deadline, the concrete consequence of postponement and the displaced task, using equivalent criteria in French and German where necessary. Then calculate the proportion of these changes for which a consequence of postponement was made explicit at the time of the decision. This indicator checks whether the trade-off is traceable, not whether it was correct or increased productivity. To go further: explore the Time Management & Prioritisation training in Fribourg, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Time Management & Prioritisation in Fribourg
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