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.
People who perceive themselves to be busy are especially susceptible to The Mere Urgency Effect because...

"Chronically paying more attention to task expiration time, [they] choose lower-payoff tasks more often when these tasks are merely characterized by urgency."
An experiment to mitigate The Mere Urgency Effect found...

"[It] was attenuated when the magnitudes of task payoffs were made salient at the moment of task choice."

The researchers suggest: "shift attention away from task completion windows to task outcome magnitudes."
TL;DR

Researchers demonstrated we have a tendency to prioritize what is urgent over what is important.

"The Mere Urgency Effect leads" us to sacrifice what will be most beneficial in the long term in order to focus on unimportant tasks with shorter completion windows.
"I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." — Dwight Eisenhower, quoting Dr. J. Roscoe Miller

Follow @bpoppenheimer for more content like this!
Here's the full paper.

"The Mere Urgency Effect"

https://t.co/03gZ5S9lr0

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