Tyranny Of The Urgent

A wide variety of tasks face the developer each day. Some can be accomplished quickly, like responding to emails, and some need much time, such as implementing a new product feature. Some require little thought, like cranking out a refactoring across several components, and some take a lot of mental energy. Some have immediate near-term deadlines, and others are not due for some time.

It’s particularly easy to focus only on the tasks that must be done soon (so-called “urgent” work) but the responsible developer must fight this tendency. Urgent and important are not synonyms.