![]() Time urgency can also lead to burnout and emotional exhaustion (Conte).Įxhaustion is a common side effect of hurry-worry, because implicit in the behavior is a false belief that you have to get something done faster or get somewhere speedier than is possible. The pattern goes like this: Impatience leads to irritability, which leads to anger, which leads to clogged arteries. Time frenzy is also a heart attack risk (Cole). Managerial activities that require complex decision-making and long-term future planning are hindered by time urgency (Abbott, Sutherland). Researchers have found that rushing is bad for your work, health, and life. Nobody would want a surgeon trying to set a speed record for brain surgery slicing into their skulls. There's a reason why we have laws to prevent speeding on highways and railways. Rushing kicks thoughts from the top floors of the brain to the rote and panicked floors, which accounts for the rash emails, the impulsive decisions, and the shift from thoughtful analysis of the next move to frenzy and nonstop commotion, which isn’t forward motion. How do you get any recharging in when you have to fill every moment with production? We need to stop filling time and make our off-hours more fulfilling. It wants to book up all your time outside the office too, which kills work-life balance. That goes for when you’re at home too, so time frenzy is very insidious. These days, thanks to technology, shorter attention spans, and the endangered species of patience, we’re all caught up in it.Īll Type A’s are stuck with time urgency, which is a fixation with the passage of time and a compulsion that every second of the day should be jammed with as much production as possible. Time urgency used to be restricted to Type A personalities and the super-important deadline. The ancient part of the brain that thinks you’re going to die unless you race all day sets off the stress response and the catastrophic, shallow, and rash thinking that accompanies it. We are not under control when we’re in hurry-worry mode. ![]() Being quick, though, means you move swiftly but under control. On the basketball court, hurrying triggers forced shots, turnovers, and charging fouls, because it sets off stress-addled emotions. In my time management and work-life balance programs, we focus on quickness and qualifying urgency. Yes, you want to move at a good pace but not at one that mars your thinking, which is what hurrying does. He said, “Be quick but don’t hurry.” It’s a brilliant principle for any organization or individual. The great basketball coaching legend, UCLA's John Wooden, had the best description of how we should approach a swift result. That means we have to move with deliberate speed, and for that we need the capacity to think and focus, which isn’t there when rushing. It’s not a sprint to the death we’re on it's a marathon. We need informed performance-mobility, having our faculties functioning while we focus on the task at hand, not the clock. ![]() Speed for speed’s sake is the wrong goal, unless you like the churning stomach, temper tantrums, and mistakes of false urgency.Īutopilot mechanical momentum, minus thought, undermines productivity. Nonstop motion makes everything appear urgent when we haven’t taken the time to think about what is urgent and what isn’t. It drives frenzy, frazzle, false urgency, crisis mentality, stress, burnout, and a host of pointless mistakes that happen when the brain in hijacked by an ancient interloper that believes every minute of the day is an emergency. We’re all on a speedway these days, one driven by a fallacy that “as fast as you can” is the goal, when mindless rushing is the foundation for much of what ails brains, teams, and productive endeavor. “Hey, did you get that email I sent two minutes ago?" Pretty soon they’re going to call you up and say, “Did you get that email I haven’t even sent yet?” It’s everywhere these days, hyped up by instant technology and instant expectations. I’m talking about that hyperventilating habit of rushing through every minute of the day at work-and at home-as if you were a stampeding wildebeest. IF THERE'S ONE little adjustment that could make a giant difference in work-life balance and job satisfaction this year, I would vote for an end to hurry-worry.
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