Perhaps it can be captured by ensuring we compare counterfactual impacts.
For an urgent, “now or never” cause, we can be confident that any impact we make wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
For something non-urgent, there is a chance that if we leave it, somebody else could solve it or it could go away naturally. Hence we should discount the expected value of working on this (or in other words we should recognise that the counterfactual impact of working on non-urgent causes, which is what really matters, is lower than the apparent impact).
Perhaps it can be captured by ensuring we compare counterfactual impacts.
For an urgent, “now or never” cause, we can be confident that any impact we make wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
For something non-urgent, there is a chance that if we leave it, somebody else could solve it or it could go away naturally. Hence we should discount the expected value of working on this (or in other words we should recognise that the counterfactual impact of working on non-urgent causes, which is what really matters, is lower than the apparent impact).