When is urgency necessary?

The differentiator between extraordinary and mediocre

Abstract

Too often we engage in the flawed assumption that there is a right time to start.

The reality is that waiting on inspiration or the right conditions to prepare sets you up for failure.

Inspired by my exploration on Shiny Object Syndrome, I asked myself the question:

• When is urgency necessary?

The time will never be perfect for you to commit to something which some of us may know, but it can serve as a double-edged sword.

I felt the need to explore how urgency can tell us whether we are being distracted or whether we are being pushed towards something we aspire to.

Although you can be strategic in when you act, it is what you do before you commit that is more telling of whether you would follow through or not, and in order to get started you are in need of some urgency.

This thought piece explores the importance of urgency and specifically whether it starts with us or if it is cultivated by our surroundings.

Discussion

In most cases urgency is assumed based on what people expect of us, tell us, and what you see around you.

However, if you want to do something outside of a traditional framework, where there is not an external incentive, there needs to be an innate urgency in order to move towards that target/goal.

We will start this post on the premise of:

To do extraordinary things, you need urgency.

You will do things that seem irrational or put a seeming irrational amount of effort into something which only makes sense to you.

With honesty to yourself and a direction to move forward, the fact that your efforts will only make sense to you is all that matters.

The same way it is said not to compare your chapter 1 with someone else’s chapter 10, is the same way in which your journey demonstrates a progression from mistakes, past achievements/goals, and a drive that has had to be maintained in a variety of environments.

Behind this is holding yourself accountable for your efforts and ensuring it starts with you - motivation can only take you so far.

Within this is self-reflection, looking at how far you have come, which is something that motivates me irrespective of the occasion.

It changes how you frame situations completely.

Alongside this, we are not on this journey alone.

Sometimes, gaining reassurance on the direction I’m going in is all I need to keep going.

Communicating my direction may need a bit of rationalisation, as without reflection on my plans and how I allocate my effort, it is possible that I distance myself from active feedback.

But just explaining your direction can be what opens your eyes, even from just saying your thoughts out loud.

This is especially important at the start of working towards something, where the future is uncertain and results have not been obtained yet.

Once you start getting visible results, your challenge now is to maintain these efforts.

You didn’t start your journey just for others to witness it.

The efforts to progress originate outside of the limelight.

It is about the change you want to see and in the end the person you want to be.

Make people ask why.

Why put such dedication and effort into something outside of what you have to do?

In my opinion there has to be an inclination or some sort of pull to act which cultivates urgency in a person and is what turns a goal or aspiration into a priority.

When it is unrelated to the priority of those around you, the challenge to upkeep your efforts is clear cut.

You have to be responsible for your efforts; there will be points where you question why you are doing what you do.

This relates to a question I will explore further:

• To follow a passion, does it have to relate directly to your main priorities now?

From how I see it, there will always be transferrable skills and lessons that will benefit you no matter what the passion is; soft skills like time-management, characteristics like patience, and a generally better understanding of who you are.

As we get older our priorities shift and change, but our experiences now are not ones we can relive and alter.

Photo by v2osk on Unsplash

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Urgency and Passion

The main situation in which I find urgency and motivation within myself is when I have a deep-rooted passion for something or motivation in the immediate moment.

Let’s rewind to 2021.

Football has always been a passion of mine and after my Sunday League club had shut down and gone into administration due to lockdowns, I was left without a club.

This was a time in which online learning became the norm, and the lack of human connection just felt strange.

It seemed like even after months of learning this way I couldn’t get used to it.

Generally things seemed out of place and I felt…

Lost.

After this period and completing my GCSE-style tests, instead of having a feeling of rejuvenation, it was more like after 5 years of being in secondary school everything had come to a damp squib.

Instead of feeling relaxed, I felt like pieces were missing.

I had to find something to do.

So from May-August 2021, I continued exercising my passion of football.

It just felt right to start with a passion then figure stuff out as time goes on.

In that 3-month period, I trained consistently under my own avail.

This was also the period in which I was completing the Silver Youth STEMM Award, and so following my passion had second-order consequences on the progress I made on that too.

I felt fitter, healthier, and more focused.

As I said in LvC Part 4, I completed this programme on the basis of curiosity and completed the Silver Award in just over 3 months, despite it being designed to take a year to complete.

I had a routine centred around making progress in the programme, playing football, and keeping healthy outside of that as well.

The clarity and motivation I gained from remaining consistent in my training was invaluable and I knew that even if I ended up not finding a new club, I would have been glad I remained committed to my passion despite the circumstances.

I couldn’t have regrets.

I started my training on the premise of passion rather than need.

It was only later in the holiday when the possibility of joining a new club was actualised that I realised I was doing the groundworks for it already.

The urgency to do something in this holiday came from an angle of knowing that I wouldn’t get an extended holiday period like this again.

A holiday period where I didn’t have a specific focus beforehand, couldn’t go abroad, or expect to have major responsibilities.

As a result, I cultivated an urgency from not wanting that time to go to waste, and the ability to cultivate it in this tough period was a power.

A sidenote from this is a consideration I still take into account three and a half years later:

• What is something you can do now that looks increasingly unlikely as a possibility in the near future?

I feel as if we can take for granted the opportunity for experimentation and exploration where time allows.

As I said before, our priorities shift and change and it is for us to recognise whether our priorities alone suffice for the person we aim to become.

Even if it is the case that our priorities are changing, there will be an opportunity to explore an interest differently or a different interest altogether.

You may have heard of too much of a good thing can be a bad thing, and in this case it is a balance of what your priorities are and also what type.

Do your priorities keep you active mentally and physically, do they motivate you, and finally do they provide a bias to action?

These are all questions that come back to urgency and whether you acknowledge the role of what you currently deem important.

By actively exploring with an open mind, you open the doors to a future initiative that would not only seem unfeasible, but impossible to achieve without the groundworks you set today.

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Away from passions

In our day-to-day, urgency dictates what our next commitment will be.

You will have heard of ‘follow your passion’ which is much easier said than done, and from my perspective passion can be found by pursuing your priorities or interests from your own personal angle.

What I mean by this is that you may find a specific aspect of your day-to-day interesting and as a result you do more than you need to do.

The difference between ‘I don’t have enough time’ and ‘I’m going to find time’ is urgency.

If something is important enough you will do it.

However, I think we can become accustomed to having restrictions placed on us rather than us setting targets as clear cut as the deadlines that push us day-to-day.

I believe it is key to not have urgency controlled by the deadlines placed on you; for the time you do not have a foreseeable deadline, it can lead to a significant misjudgement in the magnitude of the task at hand.

Generally, I think the difficulty here is taking external deadlines at face value.

Not taking to account why such a deadline has been set.

At face value you may think of a deadline as indicating how long a task should take amongst other priorities.

But it may indicate difficulty, quality or standard, and where it should sit amongst your current priorities.

Some may completely avoid the task if they foresee it requiring significant effort over a long stretch of time.

Others may insufficiently plan and rush it to get it out of the way, even though they have the ability to exhaust the possibilities available to them.

These are examples of some pitfalls you can fall into if you are reliant on deadlines as a source of urgency.

Instead, I tend to use deadlines more as a framework for my own personal target.

By personalising a target to yourself, you are more likely to want to meet it and not become comfortable with what is required of you.

This comes back to priorities.

If you anticipate something urgent and important, you should also recognise it as most likely to require most of your time and it is up to you how you use it.

You should not place more pressure than is necessary on yourself, and the way to avoid this is to be sufficiently prepared for when more intense periods arise.

By being ready to prepare, you smooth the slope in completing what is required of you in that moment.

Not to mention, this would make the journey less stress and anxiety-inducing and would allow you to perform at your best when it is required of you.

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Reflections

If I approached the situation of not having a club in the way that many of us are inclined to - waiting for the right time and then act - I will have positioned myself to be fighting an uphill battle.

In this specific case, it could have been to start training only when I have found clubs nearby that I could possibly go to, or even later, when I actually did find a club.

When relating this to the life of a student, the same logic can apply to exams and job interviews.

Do you start setting foundations only when it is time to show how strong they are?

It’s more obvious for exams, you know that consistent application in a way that works for you is key for strong performance when it comes to the final exams.

However, for job interviews, similar to a football trial, everything you have done (directly or indirectly) relating to that one moment beforehand will come to light.

You can’t disguise the fact that you started practicing a week before the day to showcase your abilities.

Being reactive here means your motivation is wrong.

It is not because you want the specific position you aim for, which would come through in the application of yourself from the beginning, but instead you wanting to be pushed into doing more than you need to.

In actuality, I have found that preparedness is based on pushing yourself in excess of what you anticipate will be required of you.

This comes back to being tenacious, and you cannot be tenacious without urgency: Why try to make things work one after the other when there is no-one to push you forward?

This works hand-in-hand with having time-bound targets, as by clarifying your direction and the task’s importance, you are able to make a plan of action moving forward.

However, cultivating urgency can also be a curse depending on whether you are making impulsive decisions or not, to which my posts on Shiny Object Syndrome covered.

Despite this, you can confidently forge your own path if you have a clear direction and vision as to where you want to be.

Urgency is what differentiates extraordinary from mediocre.

Conclusion

If you see urgency as a tool for preparedness, you’re already on the back foot.

By exploring urgency from within, I have highlighted why the ability to manage urgency can lead extraordinary results being achieved.

Urgency may be interchanged with pressure, but the connotations of them are misaligned with what I have demonstrated in this thought piece.

Pressure, internally or externally, can be placed on you all the time, but urgency comes from within and is a response.

In some cases, how responsive you are to pressure determines how your experience urgency.

When it comes to waiting for a push, I realised that my urgency comes as a result of my ambition, where I envision my future self to be as a result of my efforts now.

To go further on your own accord is a privilege in amongst itself; a spare capacity that your environment has afforded you.

It is far from a duty to explore this spare capacity, but ask yourself:

Do you want to connect the dots or allow them to be connected for you?

P.S

How do you respond to urgency?