In today's fast-paced, technology-driven world, it seems like everything is marked as "urgent." We're constantly bombarded with notifications, emails, and requests that demand our immediate attention. This culture of urgency has become the norm in many workplaces, but it's taking a toll on our well-being and productivity.
Dermot Crowley's book "Urgent!" tackles this pervasive issue head-on. He argues that while some urgency is necessary and even beneficial, too much of it can lead to stress, burnout, and inefficiency. On the flip side, too little urgency can result in stagnation and missed opportunities. The key, Crowley suggests, is finding the right balance.
This book offers valuable insights and practical strategies for harnessing the power of urgency in a productive way. It teaches readers how to distinguish between productive and unproductive urgency, manage competing priorities, and create a more balanced and effective work environment. Whether you're an individual looking to improve your personal productivity or a leader aiming to boost your team's performance, "Urgent!" provides a roadmap for navigating the complex landscape of modern work.
The Problem with Senseless Urgency
The Toll of Constant Urgency
The modern workplace is often characterized by a sense of constant urgency. Many of us pride ourselves on being hard workers and effective team members, but this drive can sometimes lead to a frantic, unsustainable pace. Research from the Journal of Applied Psychology reveals some alarming statistics: 40 percent of Americans experience anxiety during their workday, and 72 percent say it affects both their work and personal lives.
A significant contributor to this problem is technology. The unprecedented level of connectivity we now enjoy has its downsides. We're faced with a constant flow of information and a pace that's nearly impossible to keep up with. In our attempts to meet these urgent demands, we find ourselves always busy, always panicked, and always rushing to deliver – but paradoxically, we're never truly effective.
This relentless urgency takes a toll on our physical and mental well-being, often leading to burnout. It also has negative consequences for businesses, resulting in missed deadlines, rework, and employee attrition – all of which come at a significant cost.
Unproductive Urgency: The Emperor's New Clothes
One of the core issues Crowley identifies is that many things marked as "urgent" aren't actually urgent at all. The Oxford English Dictionary defines urgency as "importance requiring swift action." However, in today's workplace, "urgent" has become a catch-all term for anything even slightly time-sensitive, regardless of its actual importance.
This unnecessary urgency creates stress and distraction, which is why Crowley refers to it as "unproductive urgency." He identifies two types of unproductive urgency:
Fake Urgency: This can be self-inflicted, like reacting to a message you know isn't truly urgent. Research shows that even a brief interruption can take up to 20 minutes to recover from, highlighting the hidden cost of these seemingly small distractions. Fake urgency can also be external, like a colleague who constantly escalates the urgency of their requests to get what they want.
Avoidable Urgency: This occurs when there's real urgency, but only because something that could have been avoided wasn't. It often results from procrastination, disorganization, overcommitting, or poor time management.
Both types of unproductive urgency can derail your planned workday and lead to increased stress and decreased productivity.
The Urgency Playbook: A Solution
To combat the negative effects of unproductive urgency, Crowley introduces "The Urgency Playbook" – a set of ten principles and strategies designed to help individuals and organizations manage urgency more effectively. The first principle he introduces is "Don't cry wolf."
This principle encourages us to save urgency for when it's truly important, time-critical, and unavoidable. Crowley suggests imagining an urgency token system for email: you get five urgent requests per month, and when you run out, that's it. This mental exercise can help us be more mindful about what we label as urgent.
By learning to recognize and mitigate unproductive urgency, we can start to reclaim our time and energy, leading to improved well-being and productivity.
Cultivating a Proactive Mindset
The Ice Cream Analogy
Crowley uses an interesting analogy to help readers understand urgency: he compares it to ice cream. Like ice cream, urgency is easy to consume, addictive, and can ruin your appetite for more substantial things – in this case, the truly important tasks and projects that require focused attention.
Just as ice cream comes in many flavors, urgency also has different varieties. We've already discussed the destructive, unproductive kinds of urgency. But there's also reasonable, productive urgency – issues that genuinely couldn't be planned for and require swift action. For example, a last-minute opportunity with a tight application deadline, or an unexpected regulatory investigation that requires an immediate report.
Productive urgency can be a powerful tool for creating traction and momentum. The key is to learn to distinguish between productive and unproductive urgency, and to cultivate a mindset that allows you to leverage the former while minimizing the latter.
The Importance of a Proactive Approach
Crowley emphasizes the importance of being mindful not just of the urgency we accept, but also of the urgency we generate. Our actions, no matter our role, can significantly impact others' workdays. This leads to the second and third principles of the Urgency Playbook: use urgency with care, and avoid creating unnecessary urgency for others.
These principles are closely related and both involve making a proactive workstyle your default mode of operation. When you work proactively, you act in ways that maximize benefits and minimize harm to both yourself and others. While changing ingrained habits and behaviors can be challenging, it all starts with awareness and outlook.
Developing a Proactive Mindset
Crowley suggests several mindsets to focus on developing:
Plan Ahead: The old adage "failing to plan is planning to fail" holds true in both work and personal life. Taking the time to plan can help you anticipate and avoid many urgent situations.
Pay It Forward: Consider the needs of your colleagues. Are you working in a way that makes their lives easier? This mindset can help reduce unnecessary urgency across your team or organization.
Do It Right the First Time: Rushing often leads to mistakes, which in turn leads to unnecessary rework. While it might seem counterintuitive when you're busy, taking the time to do things right the first time can save time in the long run.
Prioritize by Importance, Not Urgency: In today's information-overloaded world, it's crucial to sift through competing priorities and focus on what's truly important, not just what seems urgent.
Minimize Procrastination: Procrastination often occurs with tasks that are time-consuming, complex, or lack external pressure. Find ways to hold yourself accountable to combat this tendency.
Think Several Steps Ahead: Like skilled soccer players anticipating future moves, try to be in tune with your team and think ahead in reactive situations.
By cultivating these mindsets, you can start to shift from a reactive to a proactive approach, reducing unnecessary urgency and increasing your overall effectiveness.
Implementing a Proactive Work System
The Problem with Reactive Systems
Many of us have productivity systems that inadvertently force us to work reactively rather than proactively. Crowley identifies two types of reactivity:
First-minute reactivity: This occurs when you receive an alert (like an email notification) and immediately react to it, even if it's not urgent. This compulsive behavior can constantly derail your planned work.
Last-minute reactivity: This happens when you put off dealing with something (like an email), only to forget about it and then have to scramble when it becomes urgent. This not only disrupts your priorities but can also subject others to unnecessary pressure.
Both types of reactivity can significantly impact your productivity and stress levels.
The Proactive Zone
The goal, according to Crowley, is to operate in the "proactive zone." This is the sweet spot between reacting too soon and reacting too late – it's just right, like Goldilocks's porridge. Working in the proactive zone allows you to manage your work effectively and boost productivity.
One key aspect of staying in the proactive zone is being clear on timeframes. This ties into the fourth principle of the Urgency Playbook: tell them when you need it by. When requesting work, always state the deadline, and encourage your team to do the same.
Transforming Your Work System
Crowley provides several strategies for transforming your current system into a more proactive one:
Centralize Your Commitments: Organize all your tasks and appointments in a single location. This could be a digital tool like MS Outlook or Gmail. Having everything in one place gives you better visibility and control over your work.
Manage Activities by Time: Instead of just listing tasks, block out specific timeframes in your calendar for them, or commit to doing them on certain days. Consider sorting tasks by desired start date rather than due date to avoid a last-minute mindset.
Highlight Daily Priorities: Take ten minutes each morning to identify three critical priorities for the day. Spend an hour at the start of each month doing the same for the coming weeks. This practice helps you maintain focus and perspective.
Balance Your Time: Cap your weekly meetings to ensure you have enough time for priorities and administrative tasks.
Turn Off Email Alerts: Constant email notifications are a major source of distraction. For truly urgent matters, encourage colleagues to call or communicate in person.
These may seem like basic changes, but when implemented consistently, they can have a significant impact on your productivity. Moreover, your workstyle influences those around you, especially if you're in a leadership position. By adopting these practices, you can help create a more proactive work environment for your entire team.
Managing Competing Priorities and Deadlines
The Urgency Dials
Crowley introduces the concept of "urgency dials" as a way to manage competing priorities and deadlines. He uses his own experience of writing this book as an example. When he found himself struggling to meet his original deadline due to an unexpected house move, he reached out to his editor to check if there was any flexibility. By doing so, he was able to negotiate the urgency of his deadline.
This example illustrates how constraints can often be adjusted to lessen pressure and get things done more effectively. Crowley identifies six "dials" that can be adjusted:
- Time
- Quality
- Scope
- Budget
- Resources
- Risk
Like volume knobs, these urgency dials can be turned up or down to find the right balance when managing pressing issues or looming deadlines. If one dial, like time, is fixed and non-negotiable, the other dials can be adjusted to prevent burnout and ensure successful completion of the task.
Adjusting the Dials
Here's how each dial can be adjusted:
Quality: While we all want to deliver high-quality work, sometimes "good enough" is truly good enough. An 80% perfect solution delivered on time is often better than a 100% perfect solution delivered late.
Scope: This involves determining which components are truly necessary for the task at hand. It might also mean balancing the workload across team members to ensure everyone can focus on the critical deadline.
Resources: If your team is under pressure, consider bringing in additional resources or asking for help from team members who aren't at full capacity. Conversely, removing resources can increase urgency if needed.
Budget: Having more money might allow you to outsource work to external parties or services. It's useful to have an idea of potential providers that could be called upon if needed.
Risk: Raising the level of acceptable risk might mean cutting some corners to increase speed. However, if you're risk-averse, you might need to create a high level of urgency to meet the deadline safely.
Crowley advises against making split-second decisions, especially on important issues. If pressed for an immediate answer, he suggests that "No" should be the default response.
Managing Expectations
The fifth principle in the Urgency Playbook is: don't always expect instant service. It's important to remember that everyone is busy, and any request you make may be competing with others' existing priorities. By being mindful of this, you can help reduce unnecessary urgency in your workplace.
By understanding and effectively using these urgency dials, you can better manage competing priorities and deadlines, reducing stress and improving productivity for yourself and your team.
Defending Against External Urgency
The Importance of Appropriate Communication Tools
As a leader, one of your key responsibilities is moderating urgency and leveraging it to ensure the right tasks are completed at the right time. The goal is to keep your team in an active, productive zone.
The sixth principle of the Urgency Playbook addresses this: use appropriate tools for urgent requests. Email, while ubiquitous, is not always the best tool for conveying urgency. It's used for everything from casual conversations to critical updates, which can muddy the waters when it comes to truly urgent matters. Crowley suggests establishing a separate, effective communication method for genuinely urgent issues.
Responding vs. Reacting
When faced with critical incoming issues or opportunities that require timely action from your team, it's crucial to increase productive urgency while shielding your people from unreasonable demands. This is where the seventh principle of the Urgency Playbook comes into play: be responsive, not reactive.
The difference between being responsive and reactive is significant:
- Responsive: Measured, deliberate, calm
- Reactive: Knee-jerk, instinctive, stressed
Being responsive doesn't mean delaying action. It means taking a moment to reflect before acting. It's about being mindful and purposeful when interrupting others – which ties into the eighth principle of the Urgency Playbook.
The Response Process
When you respond to an issue, you're actually taking a series of smaller actions:
- Pause: Acknowledge this as a moment of possible reaction.
- Evaluate: Understand what the issue entails and why it's relevant.
- Prioritize: Consider the opportunity cost if you switch activities.
- Decide: Choose the best course of action.
These steps can become habits that you instill in your team, helping everyone to work more effectively under pressure.
Probing Assumptions
One of the benefits of pausing before acting is that it allows you to probe assumptions. When you react blindly, you risk assuming work is urgent when it may not be. You might forget that urgency can often be negotiated.
As a leader, your role is to recognize and absorb unnecessary urgency to prevent it from causing problems or panic for your team. Instead of immediately diverting your team to a new task, make the other party justify its urgency. Ask why the issue is urgent, or whether it's truly urgent at all.
This approach, when done politely but firmly, shows that you're focused on what's truly important. It also gives you the opportunity to use the urgency dials we discussed earlier to negotiate timelines and resources if needed.
By defending against external urgency in this way, you can create a more balanced and productive work environment for your team. You'll be able to focus on truly important and urgent matters while minimizing the impact of unnecessary or avoidable urgency.
Driving Internal Urgency and Building Momentum
The Power of Mobilization
Crowley shares a personal anecdote about climbing Carrauntoohil, the highest mountain in Ireland, despite his fear of heights. Near the top, when he began to panic, his guide suddenly shouted at him to get off his knees and keep moving. This unexpected push motivated Crowley to run the final stretch to the ridge. Once there, the guide gently congratulated him.
This story illustrates the mobilizing power a leader can wield when it comes to driving urgency. Sometimes, a firm push is needed to overcome obstacles and reach goals. Other times, gentle encouragement is more effective. The key is knowing when and how to apply each approach.
Strategies for Mobilization
When you need to increase the sense of urgency within your team to tackle a critical internal priority, clear and deliberate communication is crucial. This ties into the ninth principle of the Urgency Playbook: demonstrate that you care about the task and commit fully when it's truly urgent.
Here are some strategies for mobilizing your team:
Set Accountable Deadlines: Be discerning about deadlines. Too many, or false ones, can push your team into a reactive mode. Instead, cultivate a culture of accountability.
Stick to Deadlines: "Friday means Friday" – don't let deadlines slip by unnoticed.
Allow Negotiation: Be open to discussing deadlines if team members express concerns about meeting them.
Encourage Questioning: Allow your team to question the "why" behind tasks. This can empower and motivate them by making them more personally invested.
Acknowledge Efforts: Recognize and reward exceptional efforts on urgent deadlines. This could be through thoughtful gifts, team dinners, or even just sincere words of appreciation.
Building Long-Term Momentum
For longer-term projects, it's easy for people to think they have infinite time when the due date is months away. If mobilization doesn't happen early on, you risk suddenly facing a heap of avoidable urgency as the deadline approaches.
To build momentum:
- Break the project into smaller, manageable tasks with their own deadlines.
- Regularly check in on progress and adjust plans as needed.
- Celebrate milestones along the way to keep the team motivated.
- Keep the end goal visible and remind the team of its importance.
By effectively mobilizing your team and building momentum, you can drive internal urgency in a positive way. This approach helps ensure that important projects stay on track without resorting to last-minute panic or unnecessary stress.
Defusing Urgency Loops
The Paramedic Approach
Crowley draws an interesting parallel between effective managers and paramedics. Paramedics are trained to move purposefully and calmly, even in the most dire emergencies. This approach serves two crucial purposes:
- It gives paramedics time to assess the situation thoroughly.
- It communicates leadership and control in a charged environment.
Managers, Crowley argues, need to adopt a similar approach. By maintaining a calm and purposeful demeanor, leaders can foster a culture of proactivity rather than allowing their teams to get caught up in what Crowley calls "urgency loops."
Understanding Urgency Loops
Urgency loops are states of frantic activity where everything seems more acute and critical than it actually is. These loops can be highly detrimental to productivity and team morale. They often lead to rushed decisions, increased stress, and a focus on the wrong priorities.
The key to effective leadership in these situations is to defuse these urgency loops before they spiral out of control. By doing so, you allow your team to regroup and refocus on their true priorities.
Strategies for Defusing Urgency Loops
Lead by Example: As a leader, your behaviors are highly visible and influential. Model the calm, purposeful approach you want to see in your team. This includes delivering on your commitments and promises, or negotiating if you can't – the final principle of the Urgency Playbook.
Make Time for Your Team: One participant in Crowley's workshop recalled a boss who "always had time for you" no matter how busy he was. While this ability might seem magical, it actually requires conscious effort. Making yourself available can do wonders for inspiring your team and keeping them focused.
Use the "Panic-Slap": Sometimes, the best way to reset someone in a state of panic is through a figurative "slap in the face." This acts as a circuit breaker in their thought patterns. Develop a sign or phrase that indicates the "panic-slap" has been dealt. This can inject humor into a tense situation and signal that it's time to pause and reassess.
Go to the Balcony: When things get tough, help your team refocus by "getting off the dance floor and going to the balcony." This means mentally stepping back in the midst of action to assess what's really going on. This technique ensures you respond rather than react.
Practice Mindfulness: Like any mindfulness activity, defusing urgency loops requires practice. Be kind to yourself when you fail, and reward yourself when you notice positive change. Remember, there's no rush – take your time to develop these skills.
Creating a Sustainable Work Culture
By consistently applying these strategies, you can create a work environment that's more resistant to unnecessary urgency. Over time, your team will learn to distinguish between genuine urgency and manufactured panic. They'll become more adept at maintaining focus on important tasks even when faced with potential distractions.
This approach doesn't mean ignoring truly urgent matters. Instead, it's about developing the discernment to know when something requires immediate action and when it's better to take a more measured approach. By defusing urgency loops, you allow your team to work more effectively, reduce stress, and ultimately achieve better results.
Final Thoughts
The Balance of Urgency
Throughout "Urgent!", Dermot Crowley emphasizes a crucial point: not all urgency is bad, but not everything needs to be urgent. The key to success in today's fast-paced work environment is finding the right balance.
Productive urgency can be a powerful tool for driving progress and achieving goals. It can create momentum, inspire action, and lead to impressive results. However, unproductive urgency – whether it's fake or avoidable – can lead to stress, burnout, and inefficiency.
The challenge for individuals and leaders is to cultivate the ability to distinguish between these types of urgency. It's about developing a proactive mindset and implementing systems that allow for quick responses to genuinely urgent matters while maintaining focus on important, long-term priorities.
The Power of Language
Crowley offers a final piece of actionable advice that underscores the importance of mindful communication in managing urgency. He suggests replacing the common phrase "ASAP" (as soon as possible) with "ASAR" (as soon as reasonable).
While this might seem like a small change, language is a powerful tool in shaping perceptions and behaviors. "ASAP" can come across as aggressive, implying that the recipient should drop everything to address your request. It contributes to a culture of constant urgency.
"ASAR," on the other hand, is a gentler, more trusting approach. It acknowledges that the recipient has other commitments and trusts them to integrate the new task into their existing priorities in a reasonable manner. Of course, there are times when an immediate response is necessary, but being discerning in your choice of words can set the tone for how you and your team deal with urgency.
Implementing Change
Changing ingrained habits and organizational cultures around urgency isn't easy. It requires consistent effort, patience, and a willingness to challenge established norms. However, the potential benefits – reduced stress, improved productivity, and a more engaged workforce – make it a worthwhile endeavor.
Start small. Implement one or two strategies from the Urgency Playbook and observe the results. Encourage your team to do the same. Over time, these small changes can lead to significant shifts in how you and your organization approach work and manage time.
Remember, the goal isn't to eliminate urgency altogether, but to harness its power effectively. By doing so, you can create a work environment that's not only more productive but also more sustainable and enjoyable for everyone involved.
In a world that often seems to be in a constant state of urgency, Crowley's book offers a refreshing perspective and practical tools for regaining control. Whether you're an individual looking to improve your personal productivity or a leader aiming to create a more effective team, the insights from "Urgent!" provide a valuable roadmap for navigating the complexities of modern work life.
By learning to recognize and reduce unproductive urgency while seeking out opportunities to maximize productive urgency, you can transform your approach to work. You'll find yourself better equipped to handle the demands of your job, more capable of focusing on what truly matters, and ultimately more successful in achieving your goals.
The journey to mastering urgency is ongoing, but with the strategies outlined in this book, you're well-equipped to start making positive changes today. Remember, there's no rush – take your time, be patient with yourself and others, and enjoy the process of becoming more effective and less stressed in your work life.