The Quiet Work of Unlearning Urgency
I used to believe the only way to handle overwhelm was to move faster. Tighter schedules. Smarter systems. A better plan.
And sometimes, organization does help. But there was no planner in the world, or amount of color-coding, that could touch the part of me that believed everything was equally urgent.
Urgency wasn’t a time management problem. It was a nervous system pattern. My body had learned to live in “go” mode, scanning for what’s next, measuring myself against the clock, bracing against the fear of falling behind.
Here’s the hard truth I had to learn: urgency isn’t fixed by productivity. It softens through presence.
Where to Begin If You Want to Unlearn Urgency
You don’t need to overhaul your life to start. You just need one experiment:
Pause on purpose. Choose one place in your day where you normally rush (emails, meals, finishing a task). Delay your response by 30 seconds. Notice what it feels like to resist the pull of “now.”
Pick one thing that can wait. Every day, choose one task that doesn’t have to be finished. Let it carry over to tomorrow. Pay attention to the discomfort, and the relief.
Create one small “enoughness ritual.” End your day with a sentence like: “This is enough for today.” Write it down. Say it out loud. Train your body to hear a different story than the one urgency tells.
Urgency will always try to whisper that you’re falling behind. But the more you practice slowing down, the more you realize: the point of your life isn’t to keep up. It’s to show up.
What’s one small place this week where you could practice letting something take longer than usual?
