Urgent or Necessary? The Distinction That Will Define Your Next Level
As we stand at the threshold of a new year, there’s a familiar pressure building — the urgency to respond, react, and resolve everything on everyone’s list. For entrepreneurs and professional women, this pressure is magnified tenfold. Your phone buzzes with “urgent” requests, your inbox overflows with “immediate” needs, and your calendar fills with “can’t-miss” commitments. And we see that many women find themselves exhausted — not because they lack discipline or capability, but because they spend too much time responding to what is urgent and too little time honouring what is truly necessary.
But here’s the truth that will transform your new year: Not everything urgent is necessary. And not everything urgent to others is urgent to you. Urgency is loud. Necessity is quiet, strategic, and often deeply personal. One of the most powerful skills you can cultivate as a leader, is the ability to discern the difference — not only between urgent and necessary, but between what is urgent for you and what is urgent for others
As you prepare to step into the new year, I suggest to you that time management or productivity hacking is not necessarily the best skill-set to focus on, but the ability to distinguish between what demands your attention and what deserves it. This is about reclaiming your power, your time, and your vision for what you’re building.
I have offered below, some principles that I believe will help you strengthen this discernment and help you move into the new year with confidence and authority over your time, energy, and decisions.
Six Principles to Master the Art of Distinction
1. Understand That Urgency Is Often Someone Else’s Timeline
The “urgent” email that landed in your inbox at 9 PM? That’s urgent to the sender, not necessarily to you. The meeting that “must happen this week”? That timeline serves someone else’s agenda.
The distinction you must make: Ask yourself, “Whose urgency is this?” When you can identify that an urgent request originates from someone else’s priorities, you create space to evaluate whether it aligns with your necessary goals. Professional women are often conditioned to be responsive, helpful, and accommodating. Entrepreneurs are wired to seize every opportunity. But saying yes to everyone else’s urgent means saying no to your own necessary.
Practice this: Before responding to any “urgent” request, pause for 60 seconds. Ask: “Is this urgent to me, or urgent to them? Does this serve my goals, or theirs?”
2. Not Every Urgent Request Deserves Immediate Access to You
Being capable, reliable, and competent often results in being over-requested. Many high-achieving women confuse responsiveness with responsibility. The truth is thatSomeone else’s urgency does not automatically constitute your emergency.
This does not mean you become disengaged or indifferent. It means you pause long enough to assess:
Does this align with my priorities?
Does this advance what I am responsible for in this season?
Am I responding out of pressure, guilt, or clarity?
Discernment requires space. Confidence requires boundaries.
3. Necessary Is Strategic; Urgent Is Reactive
What’s necessary moves you toward your vision. What’s urgent moves you toward someone else’s deadline. Your necessary work might include:
Building the strategic partnership that will transform your business in Q3
Developing the leadership skills that will elevate your career
Creating the systems that will give you sustainable freedom
Nurturing the relationships that truly matter
None of these things will ever be marked “urgent.” They won’t send you push notifications. They won’t interrupt your dinner. But they are the foundation of everything you want to build.
The trap: Urgent tasks give you the illusion of productivity. You check boxes, clear notifications, and feel accomplished. Meanwhile, your necessary work — the work that actually creates transformation — sits untouched.
Implement this: Each week, block non-negotiable time for your top three necessary priorities BEFORE you add any reactive urgent tasks to your calendar. Protect this time as fiercely as you would a meeting with your most important client — because you are your most important client.
3. “No” Is a Complete Sentence — And a Strategic Tool
The most successful entrepreneurs and leaders aren’t those who say yes to everything; they’re those who say no to almost everything so they can say yes to the right things. Every time you say yes to something that’s urgent but not necessary, you’re stealing time and energy from what truly matters. You’re not just overcommitting your calendar — you’re under-committing to your vision.
The empowerment: Saying no doesn’t make you difficult, uncooperative, or unhelpful. It makes you clear, focused, and protective of what you’re building. Your no creates space for your necessary yes.
Try these responses:
“This doesn’t align with my priorities right now, but I can revisit in [the next quarter],” for example.
“I’m not the right person for this. Have you considered [suggest an alternative person / solution, if you can]?”
“I’m at capacity with my strategic commitments. I can’t take this on and do it justice.”
Notice: No apologies, no elaborate explanations, no guilt. Just clarity.
4. Your Guilt Is Not a Compass
Here’s what happens when you start distinguishing between others’ urgent and your necessary: you feel guilty. The conditioning runs deep — especially for women who’ve been taught that their value lies in their availability and responsiveness.
You’ll feel guilty saying no to the colleague who needs “just five minutes” (that becomes 45). You’ll feel guilty missing the networking event you’re “supposed” to attend. You’ll feel guilty not responding to the non-emergency message immediately.
The reframe: Guilt is not a sign that you’re doing something wrong; it’s a sign that you’re doing something different. It’s the friction of breaking old patterns and establishing new boundaries. Your guilt is not a compass pointing you toward what’s right. It’s simply an emotion that arises when you challenge old conditioning. Feel it, acknowledge it, and keep moving forward with your necessary choices.
Remember this: You cannot pour from an empty cup, and you cannot build something extraordinary while scattered across everyone else’s priorities. Your focused energy on what’s necessary creates more value than your divided attention across what’s urgent.
5. Auditing Reveals Truth
You can’t distinguish between urgent and necessary if you don’t actually know where your time and energy are going. Most of us vastly underestimate how much of our day is consumed by other people’s urgencies.
Your new year action: Conduct a two-week audit starting in January. Track not just your time, but the origin of each task:
Who initiated this?
Is this moving me toward my goals or someone else’s?
Would my year look different if I hadn’t done this?
Did this require my unique skills and vision, or could it have been delegated/declined?
The patterns you discover will be revealing — and possibly uncomfortable. You might find that 60 - 70% of your “busy” work is reactive urgency that serves others’ agendas while your necessary work gets perpetually postponed.
The power of data: You can’t change what you don’t measure. This audit gives you concrete evidence to support your new boundaries and choices.
Your New Year Doesn’t Need More Resolutions — It Needs Better Distinctions
As you prepare to enter the new year, the question isn’t “How can I do more?” It’s “What deserves my extraordinary energy and limited time?” The entrepreneurs and professional women who create sustainable success, meaningful impact, and genuine fulfilment aren’t the ones doing everything. They’re the ones distinguishing between:
Busy and productive
Reactive and strategic
Everyone’s urgent and their own necessary
What demands attention and what deserves it
You have permission — no, you have a responsibility — to make these distinctions. To protect your vision. To honour your necessary work. To build the business and life that requires your full, focused presence rather than your scattered, depleted energy.
The Distinction Challenge
As you close out this year and step into the new one, I challenge you to commit to The 30-Day Distinction Practice:
Week 1: Awareness
Audit your time and tasks for one full week
Identify patterns: What percentage of your time serves your necessary goals vs. others’ urgent requests?
Week 2: Boundaries
Choose one recurring urgent-but-not-necessary commitment and release it
Practice saying no to three requests that don’t serve your strategic priorities
Notice the guilt—and keep your boundary anyway
Week 3: Protection
Block time for your top three necessary priorities and guard it fiercely
Create an auto-response or boundary statement for common urgent interruptions
Delegate or eliminate one task that’s been masquerading as necessary
Week 4: Refinement
Evaluate what changed when you prioritized necessary over urgent
Identify your next-level distinction: What still needs to shift?
Commit to three non-negotiable boundaries for the rest of the year
The new year is coming, whether you’re scattered across everyone’s urgent list or focused on your own necessary vision, and it does not require more hustle, more effort, or more urgency. It requires greater discernment. The only question is: Which version of you will show up?
When you learn to distinguish between what is urgent and what is necessary—and between what is urgent for others versus what is essential for you — you reclaim your power, your peace, and your progress. You’ve spent enough years being urgently busy. It’s time to be necessarily focused.
Are you ready to make the distinction?
So, as you prepare for the year ahead, I invite you to pause and intentionally assess your priorities, boundaries, and vision. If you desire structured support to gain clarity, strengthen self-trust, and create a personal strategic plan aligned with your purpose and season, I would love to work with you.
Share your journey: I want to hear about your distinction practice. What did you discover? What boundary surprised you? What necessary work finally got your attention?
Drop a comment below or tag me on Instagram @IamLaraAkinola with #MyNecessaryNotUrgent.
Remember:
The most successful year of your life won’t come from doing more — it will come from doing what matters. Let’s make this the year you finally distinguish between the two.
