Everything Is Urgent (and Nothing Is)

There’s no more common complaint about how we spend our time than that we invest too much time in what’s urgent instead of what’s important. And the “tyranny of the urgent” is more than a simple matter of getting our priorities confused. For me, at least, “urgency” is a whole state of mind and of body. It’s the anxious knot in the stomach, the clenched jaw, the furrowed brow.

When I’m in the grip of urgency, life becomes a grim and unrelenting matter of “getting through” tasks, getting them “out of the way,” putting real life on hold until they’re completed. And certainly, abandoning any thought of actually enjoying things until the urgent matters are decisively off my plate.