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> Something urgent must be the most important. No. Answering a ringing phone is urgent. Answering a ringing phone is not important (usually*). Opening a certi

> Something urgent must be the most important. No. Answering a ringing phone is urgent. Answering a ringing phone is not important (usually*). Opening a certified letter from the IRS is important. Opening a certified letter from the IRS is not urgent. Urgency communicates the time-sensitivity of a task. Importance communicates the value of a task. * Assuming you're not a 911 dispatcher or other on-duty call-center type of employee.

bryanrasmussen 3y ago
>* Assuming you're not a 911 dispatcher or other on-duty call-center type of employee. Or a programmer, or working on technical projects with some sort of scrum-like workflow in, in which case I believe an urgent issue is an issue that is important. I believe a lot of people on HN fall into one of those two groups. Sure theoretically you can still come up with issues that are urgent but not as important as less urgent issues but not in a way that really fits how the terms are used in a lot of our works. It's important that we transition off the platform in a year or we will pay 50 thousand dollars a month in fines, but it's urgent we solve the login issue. Yeah sure but we're going to work on the urgent issue because right now, in this moment in time, the urgent issue is more important than the issue that has a year to be fixed.