Unplanned tasks get finished more often than planned ones

More from the same diary study. When the researchers looked at what people actually completed, unplanned tasks won. Tasks that showed up during the day were rated as more urgent and more important than the ones people had planned in advance. And they were completed at a higher rate. Recency bias and time discounting explain most of it. Something standing in front of you right now weighs more than something you decided was important last Thursday. This undermines an assumption sitting under most productivity advice: that writing your priorities down protects them. It does not. Your plan gives you direction and an overview, and both are worth having. What it cannot do is win an argument with whatever just walked into your inbox. Which means the plan needs something next to it. A protected block, a closed door, a rule about what you do before you open your mail. The list alone was never going to be enough. Related Urgency, not importance, decides what gets done Do the right thing, in the…