Urgent or Important?

I took a class called Administration and Organization. yes it was as boring as it sounds... But I did learn some useful things. One of those things was how to tell to tell the difference between something that is urgent and something that is important. Something that is important may not necessarily be urgent and visaversa. There are times however when something is important and urgent or even times when something is neither.

Here's an example of a time when someone misunderstood the difference between urgent and important: I got a trillion (obvious exaggeration for effect) phone calls at a time when I was busy. The same person kept calling me over and over and over. I was wondering if i should get up and take the call but as the person wasn't leaving any messages (and I wasn't sure about the number) i decided to ignore it. Then I started getting these text pages, "Urgent call" and "please call me". The person was finally left me a message and I was able to step out at a convenient time to listen. When I listened to the message, not only was I relieved that nothing was wrong, but I was perturbed that this person would try and contact me so urgently for what seemed like a relatively small reason.

Though the matter may have been important it wasnt urgent enough to enduce a trillion phone calls and text messages.

Actually, if people focused on the difference between urgentness and importantness they would learn better time management skills, and they would feel less stressed. well.. I learned that the hard way through procrastination. anyway.

thats my rant.