Does Urgency Help Or Hurt?

Thinking, not-thinking, and recalibrating ourselves.

Urgency is a double-edged sword.

It helps put pressure on us to get things done, but it also can put pressure on us to finish the wrong things.

I certainly have a love/hate relationship with urgency.

For me, I get into trouble when I rely too much on urgency to make something happen. The truth is that there are other strategies, like having an accountabili-buddy, that can help move the needle.

I also get into trouble when I rely only on urgency to decide how I should prioritize my work. I wrote this other post a few months ago about balancing urgency with importance using the Eisenhower Decision Matrix. This is a super useful tool—but it doesn’t have a 100% success rate.

Much of the problem is that we’re not always consciously thinking of tasks, projects, or high-level goals as urgent or not. This is actually how we process most of the world. We see something, have a feeling, and only then do we have a thought. Sometimes we’re lucky or skilled enough to connect that thought to the preceding feeling, but not always.

Too much conscious thought is exhausting and it helps to reduce some tasks down to repeatable, non-thinking actions that can be done without much brainpower. Of course, too many non-thinking actions can lead to a lot of rowing in the wrong direction.

Yeah, a double-edged sword for sure.

Thinking about our relationship with urgency can help us better frame our mission all the way down to individual tasks. Consider taking a look at how you respond to urgency and how it has been a double-edged sword in your own work.

It doesn’t stop being a double-edged sword, I think we just get better at wielding it.