Brain Food #711
The Mere Urgency Effect
Thoughts of the day
Every Wednesday, for the next few Wednesdays, I will be sharing a new cognitive bias or mental model that you can add to your thinking toolbox. Being aware of our biases can help us change perspectives, be better humans, and make wiser decisions. Last week, I wrote about the fundamental attribution error, a form of cognitive bias that clouds our thinking about others.
If you always feel in a hurry without getting much done, you might be a victim of the mere urgency effect. This effect predicts that we are more likely to prioritise an unimportant task over a more important one, usually tasks that we may perceive to be more time-sensitive, such as responding to emails, reading what lies unaddressed inside one of your multiple tabs on your browser (something I am very guilty of), or paying attention to the neverending notifications on your screen.
Falling victim to the mere urgency effect could be the result of our need for instant gratification, or seeking the adrenaline rush that completing an urgent task offers versus taking on a painstakingly slow, long-term project, which can be more important and rewarding, but can seemingly take forever, and can be put off perpetually.
As Annie Dillard famously wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” How do we choose what to do and spend our precious time on?
Ironically, the more we fill up our days with busy tasks, the less space we leave to consider what is important.
Before starting, make some time to ask yourself, ‘what can go wrong if I don’t do this today? What opportunities am I blocking if I don’t do this today?’
And sometimes, identifying what is important needs a bit of imagination, and visiting ourselves in the future. Another, more important question to ask, can be: ‘What will I regret not doing, ten years from now, that I did not make time for today?’
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