Urgent!

Have you noticed how every email, meeting, and message now seems urgent? Dermot Crowley’s Urgent!: Strategies to Control Urgency, Reduce Stress and Increase Productivity begins with this very question. In an age where being busy is worn like a badge of honor, Crowley argues that our obsession with urgency has become toxic—derailing productivity, burning out employees, and eroding workplace wellbeing. His mission? To help us moderate urgency—not to eradicate it, but to use it purposefully, sparingly, and sustainably.

Crowley’s central idea is that urgency itself is not the enemy—unchecked urgency is. Modern technology, endless communication streams, and reactive leadership cultures have created what he calls the urgency trap: a loop of constant reactivity where everything feels critical, leaving no space for deep, important work. The author explains that businesses and individuals must learn to find what he calls the Goldilocks zone of urgency—neither too hot (reactive panic) nor too cold (complacent stagnation). In this balanced middle zone, we can create traction, deliver results, and sustain energy.

The Anatomy of Modern Urgency

The first part of the book diagnoses where all this speed comes from. Crowley takes readers back to a simpler business era in the 1970s through memories of his father—an accountant who worked nine to five, always took lunch, and rarely seemed rushed. Comparing that calm era with today’s hyperconnected workplace, Crowley identifies technology as the main culprit in amplifying urgency: smartphones, instant messages, and emails that ping 24/7 have compressed communication cycles and blurred the boundary between work and rest. As he writes, the speed of today’s business world has bred chronically reactive cultures, where leaders use urgency like a blunt instrument to get movement. Unfortunately, this constant sense of crisis doesn’t improve performance—it destroys focus and morale.

Yet Crowley insists that urgency is not all bad. When used right, urgency can create momentum. It helps teams overcome inertia and drives people to act on what matters. The real challenge, he says, is moderating urgency—just like adjusting dials to hit the right balance between tension and calm. This moderation mindset shapes everything that follows in the book.

The Cost of Unchecked Urgency

Crowley paints a vivid picture of what happens when urgency becomes the default state: inefficiency, rework, stress, and burnout. He describes common workplace archetypes that fuel the problem—the Hard Driver who pushes too hard, the Last-Minute Delegator who offloads in panic, the Over-Committer who says yes to everything, and the Reactor who jumps on every email ding. By humanizing these patterns with names and scenarios, Crowley shows us how easily well-intentioned people create chaos for others. He likens chronic urgency to anxiety during a mountain climb—once your body has been wired for panic too long, even minor challenges trigger overreactions. The more we normalize panic, the harder it becomes to reset.

The damage isn’t abstract. When teams operate constantly in the reactive zone, quality drops, people burn out, and good employees quit. As Crowley puts it, people don’t just leave bad managers—they leave bad cultures. This insight reframes urgency not merely as a time-management issue but as a cultural one. Leaders, he argues, must take accountability for the environments they create.

The Urgency Playbook and the “Active Zone”

To help teams recalibrate, Crowley introduces the Urgency Playbook—a set of ten behavioral principles designed to cultivate mindful urgency. The rules include commonsense practices such as “Don’t cry wolf,” “Tell them when you need it by,” “Avoid creating unnecessary urgency for others,” and “Be responsive, not reactive.” These may seem simple, but as Crowley notes, when codified and practiced consistently, they can transform culture. The playbook becomes a social contract—an agreed way of working that prevents reactivity from spiraling.

He also visualizes the three urgency zones we live in: the inactive zone (complacency), the reactive zone (frenzied overdrive), and the active zone (balanced productivity). Great teams, he says, learn to stay mostly in the active zone—dialing urgency up and down as needed to sustain progress without burning out.

A Book for the Conscious Professional

Ultimately, Urgent! is as much a philosophy as it is a productivity guide. Crowley blends evidence-based strategies with personal anecdotes—from missed flights to mountain climbs—to offer a humane model for working smarter, not faster. His approach sits in conversation with thinkers like Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People) and Cal Newport (Deep Work): all emphasize deliberateness over busyness. What sets Crowley apart is his focus on moderation—an equilibrium approach that resists extremes, perfect for our burnout age.

If you feel trapped in endless busyness, Crowley’s message is simple but radical: stop reacting and start responding. Define your urgency instead of letting it define you. Because in a world moving faster than ever, the most productive people aren’t those who rush—they’re the ones who know when not to hurry.

At the heart of Crowley’s framework is a deceptively simple distinction: productive urgency drives progress, while unproductive urgency drains it. Unproductive urgency is not just about being busy—it’s about being busy with the wrong things. Crowley maps three main types: fake urgency, avoidable urgency, and reasonable urgency.

Fake and Avoidable Urgency

Fake urgency comes from exaggeration—when colleagues or leaders yell “ASAP!” for tasks that could easily wait. It’s the email marked ‘urgent’ that sits in your inbox, forgotten, after you drop real work to respond. Avoidable urgency, on the other hand, is self-inflicted. It happens when someone procrastinates, underestimates time, or delegates too late, forcing a crisis that could have been prevented. Both types, Crowley warns, waste time and morale while giving the illusion of productivity.

Reasonable Urgency and the Virtuous Cycle

By contrast, reasonable urgency is legitimate—it arises from unexpected events, pressing opportunities, or time-sensitive responsibilities. “You can’t plan for everything,” Crowley notes, “but you can plan to handle the unexpected calmly.” Teams that eliminate fake and avoidable crises free up mental bandwidth for real ones. That creates a virtuous cycle: working ahead reduces stress, which in turn improves focus and responsiveness when true urgency appears.

(For context, Cal Newport calls this the difference between “pseudo-productivity” and “deep productivity”—the former looks active but lacks impact.)

Spotting the Signs

Crowley borrows from performance expert Stacey Barr to teach readers how to measure workplace reactivity. If everyone’s “too busy to think,” if deadlines shuffle daily, or if meetings multiply without resolve—those are tells of cultural urgency addiction. He suggests diagnosing your own style too: Are you a Frenzied worker (chaotic self and environment), Disruptive (you create urgency for others), Disrupted (you’re calm but surrounded by chaos), or Productive (you and your environment are steady)?

Recognizing where you sit is the first step toward moderation. Awareness, he says, is the antidote to autopilot reactivity.

Once you spot reactivity, Crowley invites you to rewire it through seven proactive mindsets—practical attitudes that replace chaos with calm control. He insists these aren’t personality traits but learned habits. As he puts it: “Comfortable doesn’t always mean productive.”

From Planning to Paying It Forward

The first mindset—‘I plan ahead’—underscores that emergencies shrink when you think ahead. Crowley’s travel anecdote—arriving early at the airport only to discover his U.S. visa expired—shows how forethought literally saved his trip. Likewise, being ‘responsive, not reactive’ means asking when something’s needed before assuming it’s urgent. One clever twist he advocates is the toilet paper test: always restock before it runs out. That’s “paying it forward” in action—anticipating others’ needs before they become fires.

Prioritize by Importance, Not Noise

Crowley challenges the habit of chasing quick wins. Using a caveman analogy, he compares our instinct-driven attention to ancient survival habits—drawn to motion and threat rather than meaning. The fix is deliberate prioritization: doing what matters rather than what flashes. He gamifies the process—do the “should-do” task first, reward yourself with what you “like to do,” then handle the urgent leftover. This retrains the brain to choose long-term value over short-term adrenaline.

Overcoming Procrastination and Thinking Ahead

For serial procrastinators, Crowley prescribes public accountability. He admits it took him ten years to publish his first book until his editor imposed a deadline—a real example of using healthy urgency to fight avoidance. The final mindset, ‘I think several steps ahead’, is illustrated through soccer. Talented players look up before the ball arrives, anticipating the next play. Similarly, proactive professionals scan ahead mentally, sensing project bottlenecks and team needs before they explode. It’s not about foresight, he says—it’s about mental space to see the field.

A proactive mindset isn’t enough without the right system. Crowley insists that our tools can either trap us in reactivity or liberate us from it. The key is shifting from what he calls ‘first-minute’ or ‘last-minute’ behavior to living in the ‘proactive zone’—the Goldilocks moment where action happens at just the right time.

Fixing Tools and Habits

First-minute reactivity is impulsive action—like replying instantly to every ping. Last-minute reactivity is chronic procrastination—scrambling when deadlines collide. Both exhaust energy. The solution is visible, time-based planning. Use one central system for tasks and meetings combined (Outlook or Google Calendar), tie every action to a time, and guard that scheduled time fiercely. Crowley’s clients often discover that 80% of their week evaporates in meetings, leaving no space for actual work—so he urges setting strict time caps on meetings to reclaim bandwidth.

Scheduling, Focus, and Boundaries

He also promotes highlighting three critical priorities a day—small wins that create momentum. He borrows from Stephen Covey’s classic “Big Rocks” metaphor but grounds it in digital reality: mark your top three in your calendar each morning and protect them against distractions. And, yes, Crowley repeats his mantra from previous books: turn off your email alerts. Constant notifications are the kryptonite of deep focus. Build communication agreements in your team about how real urgency will be signaled (such as face-to-face or text), not assumed by default.

(This philosophy parallels David Allen’s Getting Things Done—structure frees creativity.)

Crowley recognizes that no system operates in isolation. Managers often sit between competing pressures—senior leaders demanding speed, and teams needing breathing room. To survive this squeeze, he introduces the Six Urgency Dials, a framework borrowed from project management’s triple constraint model (time, cost, scope) expanded to six levers: time, quality, scope, resources, budget, and risk. Instead of saying “it can’t be done,” managers can fine-tune these dials to find balance.

The Six Dials in Action

If a deadline is too tight, perhaps the quality bar can adjust (80% is good enough). If quality or compliance cannot move, add resources or budget. Need to reduce pressure? Narrow the scope. Crowley recalls his own misstep pushing his team to meet an unnecessary early deadline for training materials; by later easing the time dial, he improved both quality and morale. The framework not only empowers negotiation but normalizes it—leaders don’t have to break people to hit deadlines.

He even reframes risk appetite as a cultural dial: lower risk means slower, more deliberate work; higher risk can accelerate delivery but at a cost. Mature teams understand this tradeoff and agree on tolerances openly.

Negotiation as Leadership

Crucially, negotiating urgency is not weakness—it’s leadership. Crowley urges managers to know their team’s non-negotiables and back them publicly. He shares Charles’s story—a bank manager who viewed occasional complaints about his team as proof they were holding firm against unfair deadlines. Backing your team sends a message to the organization: we deliver well, not just fast. Over time, it reorients culture from reactive compliance to strategic collaboration.

In Part III, Crowley elevates his message from personal productivity to collective discipline. He defines leadership as the art of moderating team urgency. Just as pilots stay within safe airspeed ranges, managers must keep teams in the “active zone”—steady enough to deliver, fast enough to stay engaged.

The Urgency Matrix

Crowley introduces a practical tool called the Urgency Matrix, which offers four strategies based on whether urgency must increase or decrease and whether it’s driven internally or externally: Respond, Absorb, Mobilise, and Defuse. Each quadrant trains leaders to choose the right reaction for the right signal. If an issue is real and external (say, a regulatory request), respond with calm efficiency. If it’s externally fake, absorb and filter it before it hits your team. If it’s internal and requires tempo, mobilise. And when energy spirals into frenzy, defuse.

Managing Energy, Not Just Time

In these chapters, Crowley emphasizes tone: good leaders walk calmly into chaos—like paramedics who never sprint. Their demeanor sets the cultural climate. They calm urgency by modeling steadiness and “getting on the balcony,” a leadership metaphor from Ron Heifetz meaning to step back mentally and watch the system as a whole. The biggest mistake, Crowley warns, is rewarding reactivity—praising employees who respond fastest instead of those who think best.

When urgency loops spiral, leaders must reset, prioritize the big-picture ‘yes,’ and remind teams that sensible pace is strategic strength. In Crowley’s words, if you act like everything’s on fire, eventually everything will burn.

One of Crowley’s sharpest insights lies in a small semantic shift: stop reacting—start responding. Reactivity is reflex; responsiveness is reflection. The difference is the pause. Drawing from neuroscience and sports metaphors, Crowley explains how knee-jerk reactions evolved to protect us from predators but sabotage us in offices.

Creating the Space Between

He proposes a four-step mental circuit breaker: Pause to notice the trigger, Evaluate why it matters, Prioritize against existing work, and then Decide how to act. The gap between stimulus and action—what he calls “the sacred space between reaction and response”—determines emotional intelligence and productivity alike.

Crowley bolsters this with stories: a friend’s motto “put down the pen” before signing a tempting contract; rugby referees slowing scrums to prevent injury, reminding players to align before impact—an analogy for “aligning your thoughts before you act.” He even suggests replacing “ASAP” with “ASAR”—as soon as reasonable—to reset organizational vocabulary. Language shapes culture, and redefining urgency begins with conversation.

True emergencies will always exist, he admits. But those who train to respond instead of react handle crises better because they have capacity left—and credibility too.

The book concludes with a challenge: turn personal moderation into organizational momentum. Culture, Crowley insists, is built on repeated behaviors, not slogans. If urgency defines “how things are done around here,” then moderating urgency must become the new norm, one team at a time.

Start with You, Then Scale Out

Change begins individually. Review your planning habits, limit meetings, and set honest expectations with colleagues. Then bring your team in: share the Urgency Playbook, agree on communication norms, and triage fake crises publicly to model discernment. Finally, encourage leadership to treat urgency as a culture issue—discuss it in offsites, embed it in performance goals, and reward calm clarity as much as speed.

A Call for Cultural Reset

Crowley argues that COVID-19 proved this reset is possible. When forced to slow down, many organizations discovered they could deliver better results with less noise. Fewer meetings, clearer priorities, shorter email chains—proof that moderation enhances, not hinders, progress. His hope is that we preserve these lessons in the post-pandemic era, designing workplaces that honor calm focus as a form of efficiency.

“May the road rise up to meet you,” Crowley closes, quoting an Irish blessing, symbolizing a steady path forward. If the 20th century celebrated speed, he contends, the 21st must celebrate deliberate rhythm—the wisdom of knowing when to push and when to pause.