Fighting fires often becomes the default prioritization process.  This applies both personally and organizationally.  It is easy to divert your effort to the fire or even just wait for fires before acting.

The urgent/important model

In the four quadrents above, the urgent ones relate to fire fighting (i.e., fighting the fire is urgent).  The upper left activities are  probably justified in receiving attention, they are an important task.

The lower left quadrent is the problem.  Here we tend to spend time due to a false priority.  It is really not important to a accomplish ( e.g., a completely safe fire in pit with minimal danger of spreading)

We might waste our time watching the safe fire in the pit because we have been asked to (i.e., given our priority) even though we know it is not a valuable or important task (i.e., unlikely anything worthwhile will come of it).

Important – Not Urgent

Spending time on important things although there are not urgent is extremely valuable.   Typically these activities lay the strategic foundations for success.

The impact of completing important activities might not be immediate but over the long term it has a powerful effect (thats why they are classified important)

Impact of Spending time on Not Important – Urgent

It takes a lot of will power to focus on tasks that are not urgent and when there are urgent – not important tasks available, these often take priority because it is easier to do so.

Procrastination is a well known human trait and urgent not important things support this undesirable behavior when considered against the important tasks – they are typically harder so why bother.

A word of Warning/ A word of Advice

Stay out of the bottom right quadrent.  If you are in paid employment, people who spend too much time doing unimportant activities no one cares about are terminated. (Although some sneak by for years)

Spend as much time as you can in the upper right quadrent as these activites will lead to both a strong feeling of personal accomplishment and great success.  Unfortunately like the way to attaining many good things, it is the harder route.