I find myself using this mental model pretty often. Like Moltke wrote, "defense is the stronger form of war, but only the offense produces a favorable decision. Thus, every war—and most battles—regardless of how it began, should end with an offensive operation."
This is also the key reason why techniques like those outlined in the (great) "The 4 Disciplines of Execution" are so effective. They act as forcing function for one to deliberately let some fires burn, in order to focus on the most important ones. amazon.com/dp/B005FLODJ8/
If you let the day drive you, there's no limit to what "needs to be done". That's how you fall in the "active-but-not-productive" trap, and ask yourself at the end of the day / week / quarter just where all that time went into.
Frameworks like those are extremely useful to grab the bull by the horns and proactively go after the non-urgent, super important tasks
