The Urgency Trap

I used to wear urgency like a badge.

Always on. Always responding. Always moving. I told myself this was leadership.

But I had unconsciously trained everyone around me to believe that everything was a fire. And once you do that, fires are all you get.

Urgency has a way of breeding more urgency. One rushed call creates a loose end. One loose end creates an anxious follow-up. Before long, the fire is no longer outside you. It has become the way you work.

I had to learn that most things are important. Very few are truly immediate.

The pause I once mistook for delay, I now see as discipline.