Researchers studied how people decide what to work on.

This is interesting...

Researchers conducted 5 experiments to study...

When a to-do list is filled with tasks of varying levels of urgency and importance, how do we decide which task to work on?

Researchers separated tasks into 4 categories:

I. Important tasks that are urgent.
II. Important tasks that are nonurgent.
III. Unimportant tasks that are urgent.
IV. Unimportant tasks that are nonurgent.

In study after study,

"We demonstrate that people are more likely to perform unimportant tasks [that are] merely characterized by spurious urgency."

They call this tendency to prioritize Category III tasks, “The Mere Urgency Effect.”

We tend to choose Category III tasks (unimportant but urgent) because...

"The limited time frame embedded in urgent tasks [diverts] focus away from the magnitudes of task outcomes."

Essentially, time pressures cloud our thinking of what is important and what isn't.