Culture of Urgency

“If you live a good life, you find it sweet.” – Akan proverb

Every activity we have ever conjured pretends to serve the well-being and the edification of individuals and society. From the liberality of our relationships to the testing of hypotheses, we sing about the sensibilities of our actions to advance the thrive of our humanity.

What makes it more interesting is the fact that we have nurtured such activities as issues that cannot wait their turn. We have told ourselves they need to be accorded immediate respect and given the ultimate attention, and so we hear the passion behind the words that urge us to do them.

We have cunningly carved urgency onto the soles of our shoes so that every trail we step onto speaks of it. The urge to hurry is working our brains and beating our hearts. More often than not, we are able to transcend the boundaries of our abilities because the word urgency has been invoked.

Is it any wonder that we have cultivated a new culture – the culture of urgency and calling it ‘living life to the fullest.’ Just look around you and you will notice that our sensations, emotions and situations have been coveted as pressing needs that have to be instantly fulfilled.

‘Now,’ has become the new currency. Every moment is seen as an opportunity. It is either to be grabbed or it would slip away into oblivion, never come back. We see ‘now’ and are inspired to do something, anything as long as we are not idle. We have gotten to the point where we even believe thinking and thoughtfulness are a waste of time.

The culture of urgency is pushing us to move and act. And so we have mustered all our energies into movements. We assume doing something, anything is better than even thinking. It has become so ingrained in our perceptions that the surprising majority of us actually equate movement to productiveness.

Altogether, the urgency culture has had its impact on society. It has exposed idleness and pushed standards to a new height where even laziness is up on her feet. We have to admit that it is making us transform ideas into reality even before we have finished thinking through them.

It has pushed us into the fast lane, and living has become a speeding act. We have become a hurrying people, who want instant results that we believe come from instant actions. And so we act, we do that on the spur of the moment; “it helps us to live in the present,” we are told. That is why we have become so used to the movement that we are even afraid to pause least our energy levels drop and we find it hard to focus.

What we have appropriately forgotten is the fact that urgency acts on the same principle as convenience. When it favours us, we throw all our weight behind it and get it done. That is not reality; it is a falsehood that perpetrates a fabricated sense of efficiency. And so when it comes to urgency, we are all both robbers and robbed in this respect.

When we are pushed to concentrate our efforts on what one party considers as urgent, we do well to cry wolf because we can see the egoism behind the passion. It is the same way, others just as well address the same cry to what we consider urgent when we present it to them.

Let us be honest, it is not always true that all urgency is always urgent. Everything in life is important. That is why we strive to live easily by prioritizing some things. However, how we rank the issues, events and activities; the ‘urgency barometer’ depends more on our sensations and emotions, which are driven by our egos.

It is the flexibility and adaptability of our egos in one way or another, which makes urgency an important concept in our attitudes, but it is not really so. We all attest to the fact that getting a task done does not mean its impact is meaningful.

The real or invariable nature of anything is its essence. And so just because we feel something is urgent does not mean it is the most important thing to do. Yet the promoters of urgency need no anxiety over that score. They make us feel that what is urgent is what is important.

It is important to do what is urgent, but is better and more urgent to do what is important. For example, if you found yourself famished, it would be urgent to eat, but it would be important that you do not just eat, but you eat the proper kind of food that your body actually needs.

Here we get a clear appreciation of why importance takes precedence over what is urgency. It is understandable that opening up to what is important will be challenging, but it is important that we do what is important because it is that which will lead us to a clearer vision, a sense of connectedness and bring about lasting solutions to the problems the urgency culture has impacted.

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Kodwo Brumpon is an executive coach at Polygon Oval, a forward-thinking Pan African management consultancy and social impact firm driven by data analytics, with a focus on understanding the extraordinary potential and needs of organisations and businesses to help them cultivate synergies, that catapults into their strategic growth, and certifies their sustainability.

Comments, suggestions, and requests for talks and training should be sent to him at kodwo@polygonoval.com