The urgency epidemic

I was in my office at 8 p.m. about a year ago. My back was hunched, phone in one hand and papers in the other, with twenty open tabs glaring at me from two adjacent monitors. I heard a nearby door shut and wondered, “Why is my colleague leaving so late?” Then it hit me: Have I thought of leaving yet?

If you asked me what I was doing that night, I could not tell you. I doubt that whatever it was significantly altered the trajectory of my life or anyone else’s, but I know it changed me. That night (and every other night I found myself in my office at 8 p.m.), I came home irritable, snapped at my husband, blew off my friends, scarfed down dinner way too late, and substituted my bedtime routine with half a bottle of wine.

There are countless variations of this saying, but it typically boils down to: “Unless you work in a hospital, it is probably not an emergency.” This is almost a sound observation because, having worked in hospitals for more than a decade as a medical student, resident, fellow, attending physician, and finally the director of my own busy service, the majority of my daily tasks have actually been routine. Yes, I have run up six flights of stairs to my coding patient. Yes, I have responded to behavioral emergencies that put a whole hospital floor in imminent danger. But a significant portion of my time inside the hospital walls has been spent on “ASAP” emails that could have waited another week (or five), “STAT” meetings fueled by interpersonal drama, and overcomplicated projects to address meaningless concerns. The list goes on.

The irony? Many of my colleagues, brilliant physicians specializing in human psychology and behavior, are doing the same things I was: chasing false urgencies, overextending themselves, and internalizing the myth that busy equals important and exhaustion is synonymous with dedication.

I call this phenomenon the “nomergency” trap, a pervasive and devastating habit among high achievers. We have been conditioned to believe that rest is failure, but there is a high price to pay for the illusion of constant productivity: burnout, impaired attention and poor decision-making, and depletion of the very reserves we need for what truly matters in our lives.

Our brains on urgency

False urgency is a cognitive distortion. It feeds on our survival instincts by catastrophizing benign situations and mundane tasks. Then, it rewards us for attending to it, making us more likely to fall prey again in the future.

The mere urgency effect

Our days are packed with trivial tasks, while our passions and long-term goals often sit on the back burner. Although an obvious explanation may be that important work often requires more effort and delayed gratification, research suggests that there is a bigger problem: the “mere urgency effect.” A series of experiments demonstrated that people are more likely to choose to work on “urgent” tasks with short completion windows than on important tasks with greater overall payoff. Furthermore, the study found that people who perceived themselves to be “busy” were more attentive to time frames and deadlines than task outcomes. In other words, we are wired to sacrifice meaningful goals for artificial deadlines!

The stress cascade

Our “primitive” brain houses the amygdala, which is designed to detect threat and trigger our fight, flight or freeze responses, flooding the body with stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. While rapid delivery of oxygen and blood sugar to our organ systems helps us prepare to outrun a bear or fight off a gorilla, this physiological response is often unnecessary for answering emails or completing reports. Unfortunately, our brain has trouble discerning the difference between dangerous predators and modern trivialities. Over time, the daily barrage of false urgencies exhausts our stress pathways, leading to weakened immune function, anxiety, insomnia, weight gain, and brain fog.

A flawed reward system

Close your eyes and imagine yourself crossing off items one through three on your to-do list. Exhilarating, right? You just got a hit of dopamine, our body’s reward chemical. The problem with our built-in positive reinforcement system, however, is that it cannot tell the difference between completion of tasks that align with your true passions and long-term goals and those that were invented by your boss or a stranger on social media. The end result? The feeling of productivity is prioritized over actual progress, and urgency becomes an addiction.

From fitting in to burning out

Peer pressure does not end on the middle school playground, and there is no “out-maturing” social contagion. Research shows that behaviors, motivations and attitudes are easily transmitted in social environments and that people often turn to others to determine what is valuable. We “catch” stress and urgency from others around us, so it is no wonder that hustle culture is alive and well. When everyone behaves as though everything is urgent, urgency becomes the norm.

Cutting the urgency wire

The power of pausing

Think back to a time you were startled by a loud noise. Your heart started racing, and you tensed up. You may have even jumped out of your chair. But the moment you realized there was no real danger, the fear vanished, right? Although these emotions are short-lived, their impact is significant: They temporarily hijack our prefrontal cortex, the area of our brain involved in working memory, attention, and rational decision-making. False urgency often elicits fear of failure, of missing out, of disappointing others. And there is a simple tool to take back control: Pause and name what you are feeling. Even a ten-second delay can disrupt an impulsive reaction, while labeling emotions shifts control from the amygdala back to the prefrontal cortex.

Break the reward cycles.

If our addiction to false urgency is powered by positive reinforcement from our peers, our society, and our own brain’s reward system, can we use the same reinforcement to cultivate intentionality and rest? Absolutely. Just imagine: a piece of dark chocolate or a cup of your favorite tea each time you resist the urge to act immediately. A team culture that applauds leaving on time instead of sleeping in the office. Role models who glorify meaningful goals and boundaries instead of performative busyness.

The goal is not to reject productivity altogether but to redefine it. Stepping off the hamster wheel and investing our energy and time where it truly matters is a choice we make daily. Small, consistent reinforcements can rewire us toward calm and clarity, and away from “nomergencies.”

Yekaterina Angelova is a psychiatrist.