The Power of Urgency
A couple of weeks ago I was talking with my editor about my writing process, and mentioned that my book, What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20, essentially wrote itself. The words flowed from my fingertips, through my keyboard, and onto my computer screen. I wrote three hours every day, from 6–9 AM, before heading to work, and completed the book in four months. I needed to write that book… It was urgent. You see, my son Josh was turning 20 in a few short months, and I had a powerful drive to share lessons I wish someone had shared with me when I was that age.
Urgency is energizing, stimulating, and motivating!
I have never repeated that remarkable experience. Although I care deeply about my other projects, nothing has been so seamless. That conversation got me thinking about “urgency” and its role in our lives.
My initial thoughts are that there are four types of urgency:
- There is everyday urgency, like the need to sneeze, sleep, and run to the bathroom after a long drive. This urgency resolves quickly when the need is met.
- There is episodic urgency that strikes like lightning, such as the imperative to rescue someone from a burning building or to stay up all night to meet an important deadline. This urgency resolves after the event is over.
- There is burning urgency to solve a problem that literally shifts the way we see everything around us. If you are driven to unravel a mystery, such as finding a cure for cancer or determining if there is life on other planets, you are willing to move every boulder looking for clues. This urgency can be sustained over a lifetime.
- There is existential urgency that results from our awareness of the inevitability of death. This feeling, which ebbs and flows during our lives, drives us to do something meaningful. When we are vividly aware of our mortality, we choose to focus on things that really matter, discarding things that seem trivial.
Urgency is a powerful driver of our behavior — much more powerful than passions, which can lie dormant.
Urgency compels us to act!
A primary role of the leader of any organization is to instigate urgency. Leaders need to convince others to join them, and to actively work to reach shared goals. When everyone’s urgency is matched and in-sync, the whole organization generates much more than the sum of its parts. The urgency gears are so well-aligned that no energy is wasted.
On the other hand, when urgency is unmatched, problems arise. Consider what happens when your team isn’t working as urgently as you are. Or, how it feels when you are looking for a job and your urgency for an offer doesn’t match that of the hiring organization. Or, when you’re raising funds for your venture, and those you approach have a much lower (or higher) urgency than you do. In all these cases, there is lots of wasted energy since the urgency gears are not aligned.
Urgency is a potent and powerful.
I believe that people want to feel urgency. They want to feel a deep drive to act. They want to be moved, and want to move others.
I know that I am always in search of things that will create the same feeling I had when I was writing a book for my son. That feeling is potent and powerful. We often call this passion. But passion is not enough. Passion must be stirred, concentrated, and distilled until it morphs into urgency. Urgency literally moves us to act.
