How to Stop Feeling Like Everything Is Urgent
The Eisenhower Matrix for ADHD, Anxiety, and the Art of Reclaiming Focus
When your brain is constantly buzzing with “shoulds,” it’s easy to feel like everything is urgent. The email. The dishes. The message you forgot to respond to. That one task you’ve put off for three weeks but suddenly feels like an emergency. Even as I write this, I’m actively avoiding finishing my taxes (Therapists are real people too, haha).
This is especially true for people with ADHD or anxiety. The executive function system, the part of the brain responsible for organizing, prioritizing, and initiating tasks, can get overwhelmed fast. The result? Decision paralysis, burnout, and a constant hum of guilt.
This is where the Eisenhower Matrix comes in.
Real Talk from a Therapist:
I’ve lived most of my adult life with an ADHD brain, and I didn’t always know that was the case. I just thought I was disorganized or bad at life logistics. But what I was really doing was trying to hold a thousand invisible tasks in my head while spinning from one urgency to the next.
When I was working as a yoga teacher, racing between studios across the city, I constantly felt like I was dropping the ball somewhere, texting friends back late, forgetting my keys to the studio, and arriving breathless to class. I’d beat myself up for not “being better at time management,” when really, my nervous system was overloaded and trying to do too much without a clear structure.
Now, as a therapist, the stakes feel even higher. There’s the clinical work, the emotional labour, the scheduling, the admin and emails, the insurance, the continuing education, and, on top of it all, trying to be a whole person with my own body and relationships (and laundry pile).
The Eisenhower Matrix didn’t “fix” my brain, but it gave me a place to put things down. A way to externalize the chaos and remind myself:
Not everything is urgent.
Not everything is mine.
Some things can wait.
Some things can be let go.
And some things, like rest, are important even if no one is emailing me about them.
If you feel like you’re constantly reacting, constantly behind, constantly failing at being “on top of it,” you’re not alone. You might just need a better map. This has been mine.
The Eisenhower Matrix: A Simple Map for a Loud Brain
This framework helps you sort tasks by urgency and importance so you can move from reaction to intention.
The Quadrants:
Urgent + Important: Do it now
Urgent and important tasks are crises with due dates. These tasks require your immediate attention.
Important, Not Urgent: Schedule it.
These tasks help you achieve your goals, but don’t have a pressing deadline.
Urgent, Not Important: Delegate if possible.
These tasks feel pressing, but they’re not necessarily aligned with your priorities. They often come from other people’s needs, interruptions, or pressures.
Not Urgent, Not Important: Let it go.
These are the tasks that don’t matter, and you know it. They’re distractions, time-fillers, or avoidant habits.
Urgent Vs. Important Tasks
Urgent tasks are time-sensitive.
They call for your immediate attention, often loudly. These are the emails that demand a reply, the deadlines that sneak up, the things that feel like they can't wait. Urgency creates pressure—and pressure tends to push us into a reactive state. In that place, we often feel rushed, defensive, and narrowly focused, just trying to get through the next fire.
Important tasks, on the other hand, are rarely loud.
They support your deeper values, long-term goals, and personal growth. They’re the things that matter most, but because they don’t come with alarms or external pressure, they’re easier to delay. Focusing on what’s important puts you in a responsive state, one that feels grounded, intentional, and open.
Sometimes a task is both urgent and important, but often, it’s not.
And here’s where many of us get tripped up: we assume that if something feels urgent, it must also be important. That’s not always true. In fact, our brains are wired to prioritize short-term rewards and problems, even when they don’t serve our long-term well-being.
But meaning, fulfillment, and sustainable success come from choosing the important, even when it’s quiet. If you ignore those tasks long enough, they’ll eventually become urgent. But you don’t have to wait for a crisis to start paying attention.
The Different Quadrants
1. Urgent and Important
These are the tasks that hit hard and fast. They’re usually tied to a deadline or a crisis. They demand your immediate attention. When you’re in this zone, it’s all hands on deck.
What to do: Handle these first. But don’t live here. Constant urgency drains your energy.
Insight: These tasks often get done in “crisis mode” when adrenaline kicks in and provides the urgency that dopamine craves. But living in this quadrant long-term is exhausting.
2. Important, but Not Urgent
These are the quiet tasks that support your growth. They move you toward your long-term goals, whether that’s building a fulfilling career, maintaining your mental health, or showing up with integrity in your relationships.
There’s no deadline pressuring you.
Which means these often get pushed aside, especially when life feels chaotic.
But this is the Quadrant of Quality, as Stephen Covey called it. This is where your life becomes more intentional.
What to do: Protect time for these. Schedule them. Nourish them. These are the tasks that build a life you’re proud of.
Insight: Many people don’t spend enough time here because they don’t know what truly matters to them, or they’re too caught up in other people’s urgencies. Try time-blocking to help integrate these tasks.
3. Urgent, but Not Important
These tasks feel pressing—but they’re not necessarily aligned with your priorities. They often come from other people’s needs, interruptions, or the pressure to “stay responsive.”
Examples? Answering emails that don’t require your expertise, attending meetings you don’t need to be in, or dropping everything to help with someone else’s last-minute ask.
What to do: Delegate when possible. Or set clear boundaries. These tasks keep you busy, but not necessarily fulfilled.
Trap Alert: This quadrant can feel like a trap. Many of us, especially those with people-pleasing tendencies, spend most of our time here, mistaking urgency for value. The urgency lights up your brain, but these tasks drain focus from what actually matters.
Ask: Is this mine to carry?
4. Not Urgent, Not Important
These are the tasks that don’t matter—and you know it. They’re distractions, time-fillers, or avoidant habits. They sneak in when you’re tired, dysregulated, or emotionally spent.
Think: mindless scrolling, organizing already-organized things, checking your inbox 17 times without replying.
What to do: Let them go. You don’t need to optimize or earn your rest by doing them first. Just delete them. Or better yet, replace them with something that truly restores you.
Insight: These tasks often act as emotional escape hatches. Instead of shaming yourself, notice the pattern.
What are you avoiding feeling?
And what do you really need?
Why ADHD Brains Struggle With Prioritizing
If you live with ADHD, this may feel familiar:
You know what needs to get done, but your brain can’t always line it up in a way that makes sense. According to Dr. Russell Barkley, a leading expert in ADHD research, “ADHD isn’t a disorder of knowing what to do. It’s a disorder of doing what you know.”
That’s because ADHD affects executive functioning:
Working memory (holding a task in mind long enough to do it)
Emotional regulation (how urgency and overwhelm derail clarity)
Task prioritization (deciding what comes first and what can wait)
The Eisenhower Matrix acts as an external support for internal chaos. It takes the weight off your working memory. It creates clarity when everything feels equally loud.
“ADHD isn’t a disorder of knowing what to do—it’s a disorder of doing what you know.””
When Everything Feels Like a Fire
Here’s the truth: Not everything is a five-alarm fire. But to your nervous system, especially if you’re wired for urgency or grew up in chaos, it can feel like it is. The Eisenhower Matrix helps soothe that part of you by offering containment.
A way to breathe.
A way to say: “Not everything is mine to hold right now.”
What You Can Do
A Gentle Ritual for the Week Ahead
Try this:
Write down everything that’s swirling in your mind. Don’t edit.
Use the matrix to sort each task into one of the four categories.
Commit to focusing only on the top left quadrant today: Urgent + Important.
Protect space for the Important but Not Urgent items this week—these are the ones that shape your long-term well-being.
Don’t aim for perfection. Aim for clarity.
A Reminder For People-Pleasers, Perfectionists, and the Chronically Overwhelmed
You are not lazy. You are not disorganized. You are not failing.
You are likely trying to carry too much and have never been shown how to put things down.
This matrix isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing what matters and learning to let go without shame.