Narrator: Imagine visiting your father's office in the 1970s. He's a head accountant for a major company, a senior executive. You picture a scene of frantic activity, ringing phones, and stressed-out employees. But when you arrive, his desk is clear. He works at a calm, deliberate pace. He takes a full hour for lunch, sometimes even driving home to eat. At five o'clock, he packs his briefcase and leaves for the day. There is no sense of rush, no feeling of being overwhelmed. Now, contrast that with the modern workplace. The constant barrage of emails, the endless notifications, the expectation of instant replies, and the pervasive culture of "ASAP." We've come to accept this state of constant, breathless urgency as normal, but is it effective? In his book, Urgent!, author and productivity expert Dermot Crowley argues that this culture of "senseless urgency" is one of the most destructive forces in organizations today, and he provides a clear playbook for how to reclaim our focus, reduce stress, and get truly important work done.

Narrator: Crowley asserts that urgency isn't an abstract force that descends upon us; it's a behavior, often created by the people we work with—and by ourselves. To make this tangible, he introduces eight archetypal characters who generate reactivity and pressure in the workplace. Recognizing these characters is the first step toward changing the culture.

There's "The Reactor," like Joanne, a marketing assistant who feels compelled to answer every email the second it arrives. Her constant context-switching means her own priorities get neglected until they, too, become urgent, creating a vicious cycle of stress and declining work quality. Then there's "The Last-Minute Delegator," like Julie, an operations manager who is passionate but disorganized. She procrastinates on delegating tasks, letting requests fester in her inbox until she's chased for a response. She then passes the work to her team at the eleventh hour, turning her lack of planning into their crisis.

Perhaps most recognizable is "The Boy Who Cried Wolf." This is Peter, a salesperson who, in an effort to keep his clients happy, marks every single order as "extremely urgent." While his customers love the fast service, the internal office staff have become desensitized to his requests. They are on the verge of ignoring his orders altogether, meaning that when a truly urgent issue does arise, it may not get the attention it needs. These characters illustrate a core truth of the book: much of the urgency we experience is self-inflicted or created by predictable, and therefore manageable, behaviors.

Narrator: Not all urgency is created equal. To manage it, one must first learn to categorize it. Crowley breaks urgency down into three distinct types: fake, avoidable, and reasonable. The goal is to eliminate the first two to create more space for proactive work.

Fake urgency is the most insidious. It’s the self-inflicted pressure to react to things that aren't actually important or time-sensitive. A perfect example is the "Email Alert Reaction." An employee, Sarah, is deep in focus on a complex analysis. An email notification pops up. Though she knows it can wait, the habit of reactivity takes over. She clicks it, spends fifteen minutes on a non-urgent request, and completely loses her train of thought. By the time she returns to her original task, her momentum is gone. This is fake urgency—a distraction disguised as a priority.

Avoidable urgency is real, but it's a crisis of our own making. It stems from procrastination and poor planning. Consider the story of "The Last-Minute Report." A marketing analyst, John, is given two weeks to complete a crucial report. He puts it off, focusing on easier, less important tasks. On the final day, with only hours to spare, he frantically tries to complete it, only to realize he needs data from his manager, who is now swamped. The report is rushed, contains errors, and is submitted late. The urgency was real, but it was entirely avoidable with better planning.

Finally, there is reasonable urgency. This is the truly unplannable event, like an unexpected product recall or a critical system failure. These situations require swift, decisive action. Crowley argues that if we can minimize the fake and avoidable urgency that clutters our days, we will have the capacity and focus to handle reasonable urgency effectively when it arises.

Narrator: Having the intention to be proactive is not enough. Crowley emphasizes that to escape the pull of reactive behavior, individuals need a robust system. He uses an analogy from Australian rules football administrator Cameron Schwab, who said, "in footy, it’s not necessarily the best team that will win; it’s the best system." A good system helps players manage the inherent unpredictability of the game. The same is true for the workplace.

Most people’s productivity systems are outdated and inherently reactive. They might use a calendar for meetings but rely on a simple to-do list for tasks. This list often prioritizes whatever feels most urgent, not what is most important, and it lacks a time-based context. Crowley offers five recommendations to transform a reactive system into a proactive one. First, use one central system for all actions. Second, manage activities by time, scheduling them in a calendar just like meetings. Third, each day, highlight three critical priorities that must get done. Fourth, actively balance your time, for instance by capping meeting time to ensure there is space for deep work. And fifth, turn off email alerts to break the cycle of first-minute reactivity. A system isn't about rigidity; it's about creating the structure needed to make proactive choices the default.

Narrator: Managers are in a unique and challenging position, caught between pressure from leadership above and the needs of their team below. Crowley argues that a manager's primary role is to moderate urgency, acting as the driver of the team bus who makes constant adjustments to keep it in the "active zone"—the sweet spot between the chaos of reactivity and the stagnation of inactivity. To do this, he introduces the Urgency Matrix, a framework with four key strategies.

The first strategy is to Respond. This is for legitimate, externally driven issues, like a regulatory report request. The goal is not to react instantly but to respond in a measured, timely manner. The second, and perhaps most crucial, is to Absorb. This is for unproductive, externally driven busywork. For example, when a back-office support team is flooded with "urgent" requests stemming from other departments' poor planning, the manager's job is to act as a shock absorber. They question the urgency, negotiate timelines, and protect the team from the chaos.

The third strategy is to Mobilize. This is when a manager must intentionally create urgency to get traction on an important internal project. And finally, the fourth is to Defuse. This is for when the team gets caught in its own loop of unproductive, internal urgency. The manager must step in to calm the situation, like throwing a bucket of cold water on a fire, and refocus the team on what truly matters.

Narrator: Urgency is not a fixed state; it is negotiable. Crowley expands on the classic project management "triple constraint" of time, cost, and scope, introducing "six dials" that managers can adjust to moderate pressure: time, quality, scope, resources, budget, and risk. Understanding that these dials are interconnected is key to effective negotiation.

Crowley shares a personal story about designing new training resources. He initially set a tight deadline for his business manager, Chauntelle, to have them ready for a trip to the US. To save time, they decided to do the design in-house. However, the initial designs were not up to standard. The author realized that by turning up the 'time' dial (i.e., shortening the deadline), he had inadvertently turned down the 'quality' dial. He had a choice: accept lower quality to meet the deadline, or adjust the other dials.

He chose to negotiate. He called Chauntelle, abandoned the non-critical US deadline (adjusting the 'time' dial), and suggested bringing in an external designer (adjusting the 'resources' dial). This allowed them to prioritize the most important outcome: high-quality resources. This illustrates that managers are not simply subject to demands; they can actively negotiate the constraints to achieve the best possible outcome without burning out their team.

Narrator: The single most powerful takeaway from Urgent! is that the relentless pressure of modern work is not an inevitable force of nature. It is a product of our behaviors, our habits, and our cultures. We are not victims of urgency; we are often its creators. By learning to distinguish between productive and unproductive urgency, adopting proactive systems, and mastering the art of negotiation, we can reclaim control.

The book provides a comprehensive "Urgency Playbook" with ten clear principles. The final challenge, then, is a simple one: which principle will you adopt tomorrow? Will you stop being "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and reserve the word 'urgent' for when it truly matters? Or will you commit to "Tell Them When You Need It By," providing clear deadlines to avoid creating a crisis for others? Choosing just one is the first step toward a calmer, more focused, and profoundly more productive way of working.