Mark: Alright Michelle, I'm going to say the title of today's book, and I want your honest, one-sentence roast of what it sounds like. Michelle: Lay it on me. Mark: Urgent!: Strategies to Control Urgency, Reduce Stress and Increase Productivity. Michelle: Oh, that sounds like a book written by someone who sends emails with five exclamation points and the subject line 'QUICK QUESTION'. Mark: That's painfully accurate for most of us, which is exactly why we're talking about it. The book is Urgent! by Dermot Crowley, an Australian productivity expert who's been in the trenches of corporate chaos for decades. Michelle: So he's seen a lot of those 'QUICK QUESTION' emails. Mark: He's probably the one they call to fix the mess they create. What's fascinating is that he wrote this right as the pandemic was forcing a global reset on what 'urgent' even means, making it incredibly relevant for how we work today. Michelle: That’s a great point. The pandemic really did show us that half the things we thought were 'drop everything' emergencies were… not. So where does all this fake urgency come from? Is it our bosses? Is it us? Mark: It’s a mix of everything, and Crowley calls it the 'Urgency Trap.' He argues that we've created a culture of reactivity, and he even gives us a cast of characters who are the main culprits.

Michelle: Ooh, a cast of characters. Like a workplace horror movie? Mark: Exactly. He identifies eight archetypes of people who create unproductive urgency. And the first one is probably the most relatable. He calls her 'The Reactor.' He tells the story of Joanne, a young marketing assistant who is super ambitious and wants to be seen as responsive. Michelle: I know her. I am her on a bad day. Mark: Right? So Joanne gets a constant flood of emails and requests, and her strategy is to react to every single one of them instantly. An email comes in, she drops what she's doing and answers it. The problem is, her actual, important priorities get pushed aside. Michelle: And then those become urgent because the deadline is suddenly tomorrow. Mark: Precisely. So she's caught in this self-perpetuating cycle of stress. Her work quality drops, she’s anxious about her performance review, and she feels completely overwhelmed, all because she equates being 'busy' with being 'productive'. Michelle: That is painfully real. Okay, who else is in this hall of shame? Give me another one. Mark: How about 'The Last-Minute Delegator'? This is the manager, let's call her Julie, who is passionate but disorganized. She lets requests pile up in her own inbox because she's indecisive or just swamped. Then, when someone chases her for an answer, she panics and delegates the task to her team at the last possible second. Michelle: Creating a crisis for her team because of her own poor planning. I think we've all worked for a Julie. Mark: It's a classic. And it creates so much resentment. Then there's my personal favorite, 'The Boy Who Cried Wolf.' This is Peter, the salesperson who marks every single order as 'URGENT' to keep his clients happy. Michelle: Oh, the all-caps 'URGENT!' in the subject line. A true classic. Mark: The clients love him because they get fast service. But the back-office staff? They're completely burnt out from his constant false alarms. They're getting to the point where they're about to ignore his requests entirely, even if a real emergency comes up. He’s diluted the very meaning of the word. Michelle: Wow. So we have the person who reacts to everything, the person who delegates their chaos, and the person who creates fake emergencies. It’s like the four horsemen of the productivity apocalypse. Mark: There are eight of them! We also have The Conductor, The Over-Committer, The Distractor, The Hard Driver, and The Procrastinator. They all have good intentions, mostly, but the outcome is the same: a workplace drowning in 'senseless urgency.' Michelle: 'Senseless urgency.' I like that term. It feels like so much of modern work is just that—activity for the sake of activity, without any real forward momentum. Mark: And what all these characters have in common is that they create unproductive urgency. Crowley argues we need to learn to tell the difference, almost like sorting our recycling.

Michelle: Okay, so not all urgency is bad? I thought the goal was to achieve some zen-like state of calm productivity. Mark: Not at all. Crowley is very clear that some urgency is good. He calls it 'Productive Urgency.' It's what creates traction, builds momentum, and helps us overcome inertia. The problem is the other kind, the 'Unproductive Urgency.' He says it's a bit like ice cream. Michelle: How is urgency like ice cream? Mark: It's so easy to consume, it feels good in the moment, and it can become addictive. But a diet of only ice cream is going to make you sick. He breaks down unproductive urgency into two main flavors. The first is 'Fake Urgency.' Michelle: Fake urgency? What does that even mean? Mark: It’s when something feels urgent, but it isn't. He tells a great story, 'The Case of the Unnecessary 'URGENT!' Email.' A junior marketing associate, Sarah, gets an email from her manager, Mark, with the subject line 'URGENT! Need this ASAP!' Michelle: My heart rate just went up just hearing that. Mark: Right? So Sarah drops her big, important project and immediately opens the email. The request? To change a single number on one presentation slide. It takes her five minutes, but it completely breaks her focus. She sends it back, feeling stressed but accomplished. The punchline? The manager doesn't even look at it until the next day. The presentation isn't for another week. Michelle: I want to throw something. That is the most infuriating, and most common, story in corporate life. That manager, Mark, is a villain. Mark: He’s a villain of inefficiency! That's 'Fake Urgency.' It's manufactured pressure that serves no purpose. The second flavor of unproductive urgency is 'Avoidable Urgency.' Michelle: Okay, what's the difference? Mark: Avoidable urgency is real, but it didn't have to be. This is the urgency born from procrastination or poor planning. The classic example is 'The Last-Minute Report.' A guy, John, is given two weeks to complete a report. He puts it off, does other easier tasks, and then on Friday afternoon, with hours to go, he realizes he needs data from his manager, Lisa. Michelle: So now his procrastination has become Lisa's emergency. Mark: Exactly. The urgency is real—the deadline is today! But it was completely avoidable. The report is rushed, the quality is poor, and everyone is stressed. This is where Crowley quotes that great saying: "A lack of planning on your part should not cause a crisis for me." Michelle: I want that on a t-shirt. So we have Fake Urgency, which is a lie, and Avoidable Urgency, which is a self-inflicted wound. What's the good kind? Mark: The good kind is 'Reasonable Urgency.' This is the stuff you can't plan for. A sudden product recall, a major client opportunity that just landed, a server crash. It's real, it's unavoidable, and it requires a swift, measured response. The goal, Crowley says, isn't to eliminate urgency, but to minimize the fake and avoidable kinds so you have the capacity to handle the reasonable kind when it appears. Michelle: The framework makes sense. But how do you tell the difference in the moment? When an email is marked 'URGENT!', my brain just panics. It doesn't stop to categorize it into 'fake' or 'avoidable.' Mark: And that's the core of the personal solution. You have to build what he calls a 'circuit breaker.' A tiny pause between the stimulus—the email—and your response. In that space, you can ask the question: which flavor of urgency is this, really? Michelle: This circuit breaker idea feels like a personal responsibility. But what about when the urgency is coming from the top down? What's a manager supposed to do? Just tell their team to 'pause' when the CEO is breathing down their neck? Mark: That's the million-dollar question, and it leads to the most powerful part of the book for anyone in a leadership role. Crowley argues the manager's job is not what we think it is.

Michelle: What do we think it is? To crack the whip and make sure things get done? Mark: Exactly. Many see the manager's role as a 'conductor' of urgency—to take the pressure from above and pass it down to the team, maybe even amplify it. To 'light a fire' under people. Michelle: Yeah, that sounds about right. Mark: Crowley says that's a recipe for burnout and senseless urgency. He argues a great manager's primary role is to be a 'shock absorber.' Their job is to stand between the chaos and the team, and protect their team's focus. Michelle: A shock absorber. I love that metaphor. So they take the hits so the team doesn't have to? Mark: Precisely. He lays out a four-part playbook for how to do this, based on whether the urgency is productive or unproductive, and whether it's coming from outside or inside the team. The four strategies are: Respond, Absorb, Mobilize, and Defuse. Michelle: Okay, break those down for me. 'Absorb' sounds particularly interesting. Mark: 'Absorb' is maybe the most important. This is for when unproductive urgency is coming from outside the team—like another department with poor planning. He tells a story about a back-office support team that's constantly flooded with 'urgent' requests. Instead of passing them all on, the manager steps in. He 'absorbs' the pressure. Michelle: How? What does he do? Mark: He doesn't do the work himself. He questions the urgency. He'll go back to the person and ask, "Why is this urgent? What happens if we deliver it on Monday instead of Friday?" He negotiates. He pushes back. He protects his team from the 'senseless urgency' created by other people's chaos. Michelle: This 'absorb' idea is great, but it sounds like the manager just takes on all the stress themselves. How is that sustainable? Mark: That’s the key distinction. Absorbing isn't about taking on the work or the stress; it's about absorbing the initial impact and deflecting the unproductive pressure. It's about being a filter, not a sponge. It requires courage to question and negotiate, which is a core leadership skill. Michelle: Okay, so 'Absorb' is for blocking bad urgency. What about 'Mobilize'? Mark: 'Mobilize' is the opposite. This is when a manager needs to create productive urgency within the team. There's an important internal project that's losing steam. Here, the manager's job is to light a fire. But it's a purposeful, focused fire on a single, important goal, not a scattered wildfire of panic. Michelle: And 'Respond' and 'Defuse'? Mark: 'Respond' is for that reasonable, external urgency, like the product recall. You don't absorb it; you respond in a measured, planned way. And 'Defuse' is for when your own team is creating its own unproductive urgency—getting caught in a reactive loop. The manager steps in to calm things down, to throw a bucket of water on the fire, and refocus everyone on the real priorities. Michelle: Wow. So the manager is constantly adjusting the urgency dial—turning it up, turning it down, blocking it, channeling it. It's a much more sophisticated role than just being a megaphone for the boss. Mark: It's the difference between being a thermostat and a thermometer. A thermometer just reflects the temperature in the room. A thermostat sets it. Great managers are thermostats for urgency.

Michelle: That is such a powerful way to think about it. It feels like the whole journey of this book is about moving from being a thermometer—just reacting to the heat—to becoming the thermostat. Mark: I think that’s a perfect summary. It starts with personal diagnosis—recognizing the 'Urgency Characters' in yourself and others. Then it moves to a personal system—learning to categorize urgency into fake, avoidable, or reasonable, and creating that 'circuit breaker' pause. And finally, for leaders, it's about graduating to that role of the 'shock absorber' who actively manages the team's environment. Michelle: It feels less like a set of productivity 'hacks' and more like a fundamental mindset shift about where we place our attention and what we value. Mark: Exactly. The core insight isn't to work in a world with no urgency. That's a fantasy. It's to become the person who can stand in the middle of the storm of emails, pings, and requests, and calmly decide which winds actually matter. That's the real power. Michelle: Okay, so the one thing I'm taking away is to create a 'circuit breaker.' For the next week, I'm not going to reply to any 'urgent' email for at least ten minutes. Just pause and ask: is this fake, avoidable, or reasonable? Mark: I love that. And for everyone listening, we're curious: which of the eight urgency characters do you see most at your work? Or, be honest, which one are you? Let us know on our socials, we'd love to hear your stories. Mark: This is Aibrary, signing off.