In a 1954 speech, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was quoting Dr J. Roscoe Miller, president of Northwestern University, said: “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
I have always taken this to mean that we should focus on long-term goals and not get distracted by today’s minor crises.