False Urgency Will (Not) Save Us

I’m not good under pressure. When something rattles me, I have a tendency to go into extreme fight or flight mode. And when I do, I tend to do dumb things. Immensely dumb things.

For awhile, I thought I was just too sensitive. It’s only recently that I discovered that my nervous system is almost always on the fritz. There’s usually a tightness in the right side of my face that makes the vision in my right eye blurry. On the rare occasion when my vagus nerve relaxes, the tightness goes away and my vision is perfectly clear. Like, it’s essentially 20/20 vs. most of the time when I start to question if I need glasses. That’s how I discovered this—my voice teacher helped me relax my vagus nerve for the first time in my entire life by wrapping a Sweet Sweat band around my waist (it basically acts like a swaddle) and I literally couldn’t believe my eyes. So it would make sense to me that if I get a lot more stimulation on top of my already over-stimulated state, it’s too much for my nervous system to handle and it’s really difficult to function in a thoughtful way. Then mistakes get made and I’m left cringing once I can think clearly again.

But maybe it’s not just me. At basically every job I’ve had, I’ve seen what happens in moments of intense pressure. People don’t think. They make decisions quickly. The tone of the email becomes way too harsh or the logic is off (I’ve been in customer service, communications, and marketing most of my life, so a lot of the decisions around me have to do with emails or data). And before someone can think twice, there’s a new crisis that needs to get solved.

That’s why I hate false urgency. It puts people into long-term fight or flight. People make decisions reactively as a norm, and worst of all, consequences aren’t thought through.

I’m talking about the consequences that happen to patients when doctors are put under pressure to hit certain numbers rather than just give each patient the best care they can. Or what happens to a work environment when there is suddenly a quarter of flat or negative earnings (which is natural) and the pressure is on to grow or get fired. Or what happens to employees who are told to compete with machines that they can never outpace or fall behind.

False urgency is fueled by scarcity mindset: that there is always competition pressing in on you, and you either need to outrun them or get trampled. And our world loves this because it fuels the economy. People work as long and hard as possible when there’s the constant threat that someone else is always coming up behind them to take them job. People buy things they don’t really need so they don’t miss out on what their favorite influencer is promoting. People keep scrolling on social media because they feel like if they miss something they’ll be out of the loop and behind.

Most of us don’t have any idea what authenticity even looks like anymore because we’re inundated with so much false urgency and scarcity. And when real urgency comes, we don’t have the energy or mental capacity for it.

What I’ve been trying to remember lately is to pause when false urgency arrives at my door. If possible, I try to shut the door until my nervous system calms down, but if that’s not possible, I take a few deep breaths and try to reground myself. That doesn’t just happen on its own, though. That happens because I give myself intentional space away from urgency so I can get back to a grounded state more quickly.

There are a few things I try to do every day:

• Spend at least a few minutes with my eyes closed listening to what’s happening inside—this doesn’t have to be formal meditation, just whatever will help eliminate distractions
• Stay off social media as much as possible
• Vagus nerve exercises
• Go outside and visit my garden so I’m spending at least a few minutes in the sun touching some earth
• Walk my dog without my phone so I get even more sun and nature

I’m not always consistent with this, and when I’m not I can feel my nervous system start to fry. It’s an important reminder that I need to prioritize this stuff.

More than anything, nature has been the anti-urgency cure I never knew I needed. Nature is, quite literally, almost never in a state of urgency. Urgency happens when there’s danger around, as it’s supposed to. Otherwise, things are pretty relaxed.

If you’ve ever grown something, you know darn well that plant is going to take its dear sweet time to do whatever it’s going to do. Are there things you can do to hurry it along? Sure, but then you end up with fewer nutrients and worse flavor. You can have the faster plant, or you can have the better plant. You can’t have both.

So nature is my role model these days. I’m constantly asking myself how can I take my time and not feel guilty about it?

Maybe that seems silly when the world is on fire, but to me, anti-urgency is one of the most powerful tools every single one of us needs to learn and embrace if we want a better world. Many people have pointed out that the vast amount of executive orders and actions out of Washington in the last few months are intentionally fast and urgent as hell because they’re meant to wear everyone down so people stop pushing back. The only way to quite literally keep going for the long term is to keep the false urgency coming at you in check so you don’t burn out.

And in an economy that preaches from the pulpit of false urgency, it takes immense courage and vision to not be part of that. Courage because the pressure of scarcity is enormous, and when you say no to it you’re taking a leap of faith that it’s possible for things to work out even though the world is telling you’re already a failure. Vision because you have to be able to see that a better, less scarce, more just, more equal world is possible, but only if more of us take the step forward to get us there.

What’s interesting about the firehose of scarcity and false-urgency that has hit us is that people are starting to realize they don’t like it. To me, that is at least one big reason why Zohran Mamdani won his primary election the other day despite the fact that Democrats threw millions of dollars and tons of endorsements behind Andrew Cuomo. People can feel how unsustainable this is and how desperately change is needed. And they are voting for change.

So how do we get there? One small step at a time.

One of my favorite resources around creating more space and removing yourself from false urgency is Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey. This book both goes into the history of where the pressure to always be productive comes from and gives examples of how rest is possible for anyone. If you haven’t read it yet, I highly suggest starting there.

How about you? Have you noticed the impact urgency has on you and the people around you? Have you found any resources that have helped you keep false urgency at bay? Let me know in the comments below.

P.S. None of my links are affiliate links, I just like to share the links of items and people that have impacted me.