How Great Leaders manage time differently
Urgency vs. Importance: How Great Leaders Manage Time Differently
Some of the most talented leaders I’ve coached over the years have one thing in common: they constantly feel like they’re drowning in tasks. From boardroom presentations to back-to-back meetings, from inbox floods to urgent client demands—everything seems critical. Everything screams now. Yet when we finally get a moment to breathe and step back, we often find that the work we’re consumed by isn’t the work that moves the needle.
That’s the trap.
In the absence of clarity, urgency wins. And slowly but surely, urgency becomes culture. We praise reactivity. We celebrate long hours. We glamorize burnout. We call it hustle. But I’ve learned—both the hard way and through decades of observation—that what is urgent is not always important, and what is important rarely feels urgent until it’s too late.
There was a time in my own career where I believed responsiveness was a badge of honour. Every email replied to within minutes, every phone call answered immediately, every decision rushed to closure. I thought speed equaled leadership. But all I was really doing was mistaking movement for progress. And the more I operated in that cycle, the more my vision narrowed. I was putting out fires, but not planting any trees.
It wasn’t until my health forced me to slow down that I really began to understand the cost of urgency. I was delivering on deadlines, hitting client goals, ticking boxes—but I was missing the important things. Strategy. Culture. Leadership development. Innovation. These didn’t scream for my attention. They whispered. And in a noise-filled calendar, whispers get ignored.
That’s when I made the shift.
The Tyranny of the Immediate
If you’re a business owner or executive, you know this cycle intimately. A team member asks for feedback—you want to help, so you drop your task. A supplier has a delivery issue—you jump in to fix it. Finance needs an urgent sign-off—you cancel your planning session. And just like that, your week becomes a patchwork of other people’s priorities.
We tell ourselves we’re being productive. That we’re needed. That we’re keeping things afloat. But when we live in urgent mode, we operate on other people’s timelines. We sacrifice strategy for speed. We trade leadership for logistics. And worst of all—we train our teams to depend on our reaction, instead of developing their own.
Author and productivity consultant Stephen Covey drew the clearest line on this in his Time Management Matrix from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He categorized tasks into four quadrants: urgent and important, important but not urgent, urgent but not important, and neither. Most leaders operate in the first and third quadrants—because urgency demands it. But the quadrant that transforms businesses? It’s the second one: important, but not urgent.
That’s where vision lives. That’s where culture is built. Where leaders are developed. Where innovation is nurtured. And it’s the quadrant most easily sacrificed when urgency rules your schedule.
Time Management vs. Energy Leadership
One of the biggest shifts I’ve made in my own practice—and that I now teach to teams—is that managing your calendar is not about filling slots. It’s about guarding space. The goal is not efficiency. It’s effectiveness.
You can be highly efficient at unimportant work. You can automate, systemise, colour-code, and still spend your week reacting instead of creating. True leadership requires energy management, not just time management. Because the most important work you do as a leader—building trust, developing people, crafting strategy—requires your best energy, not just your free time.
I ask leaders all the time: When do you do your most important thinking? The answer, more often than not, is “When I’m on holiday,” or “At night when everyone else is asleep,” or “In the shower.” Why? Because it’s the only time they’re not reacting.
That’s not sustainable. And it’s not scalable.
If your best ideas only emerge when you’re away from your business, you don’t have a time problem. You have a leadership design problem.
What Important Work Actually Looks Like
Here’s the truth: important work rarely feels urgent. It doesn’t ring. It doesn’t buzz. It doesn’t break into your day. Which is why so many leaders avoid it.
Culture development is important. But no one will remind you to do it.
Strategic thinking is important. But it won’t appear on your inbox.
Succession planning is important. But unless there’s a crisis, it won’t scream for your attention.
Even rest is important. But it will always feel indulgent next to the pull of productivity.
That’s why great leaders do something average ones don’t: they schedule importance. Not as filler, but as focus. They make space—non-negotiable space—for the kind of work that pays off not this week, but next year.
When I restructured my own schedule, I made two key commitments:
Thinking Time: Every week, blocked time for nothing but reflection and vision. No phone. No meetings. Just me, a notebook, and honest thinking.
Strategy Sessions: Not just project planning—but strategic problem-solving with my team. Space to ask, What’s not working? What are we missing? Where do we need to change before the market forces us to?
These weren’t “extra” activities. They became the heartbeat of how I lead.
And slowly, urgency lost its grip.
What Your Calendar Says About Your Leadership
If I looked at your calendar today, what would it say about your values?
Would it reflect crisis management or cultural shaping?
Would it show space for creativity—or just survival?
Would it confirm that you are building a business for scale—or one that needs you in every meeting?
Your calendar doesn’t lie. It reveals your priorities. Not what you say matters, but what you actually do.
This is not about perfection. There will always be urgent moments. Emergencies will arise. Deadlines will press. But if those moments define your week, you’re leading on the back foot. And over time, that will cost you. Not just energy—but impact.
The leaders who last—and who build companies that outlive them—are the ones who learn to protect importance, even in the face of urgency.
Redefining What It Means to Be “Busy”
Being busy is not the same as being effective. I’ve coached burned-out managers who log 60-hour weeks and feel like they’ve achieved nothing. And I’ve worked with CEOs who only take five meetings a week and drive results that transform industries.
What’s the difference?
Focus. Clarity. Boundaries.
Learning to Let Others Carry the Urgency
You don’t have to carry it all.
My job as a leader is not to respond fastest.
It’s to think deepest.
To protect the kind of clarity that keeps others from panicking.
To build a team that knows how to solve problems without me.
And to create a culture where importance is protected—even when urgency knocks.
