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Key Takeaways False urgency has heightened with “always on” culture, causing serious stress and health risks for employees.
Gen Z especially pushes back against the non-stop urgency, seeking respect for their time and mental well-being in the workplace.
Leaders are advised to differentiate between urgent and important tasks to avoid unnecessary stress and to prioritize critical work.
During a recent stay at a hotel, the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night. Bleary-eyed, I threw on my shoes, grabbed my phone and stumbled toward the lobby to join the rest of the hotel’s guests, who had all just performed the same half-asleep, fully panicked dance I had.
Calm was restored after about 20 minutes (it was a false alarm), but even after I’d returned to the quiet of my room, my heart kept pounding. It felt like forever before I was finally able to relax enough to fall back asleep, and the next day, I was tired and cranky as a result of the interruption.
These things happen. But the alarm incident reminded me that emergencies — real or not — take an incredible toll on our nervous systems. It also struck me how similar this felt to a workplace where everything is treated like a fire drill. Urgency has its place. But when every request becomes an all-caps, panic button moment, nothing truly urgent stands out — and your teams pay the price.
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The urgency trap
These days, “urgent” has become a default setting. Routine requests have somehow become “time-sensitive.” Slack messages are marked “high-priority” without any evidence that they actually are. Leaders aren’t creating chaos intentionally, but this constant state of crisis is becoming commonplace.
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