I have had the opportunity to work across various projects in a multibillion-dollar companies. During this journey, I often found myself asking my friends and colleagues a simple question:
“What has the last few days really demanded from you?”
The responses were revealing.
One of my colleague said, “I simply cannot switch off. The moment I try, something urgent comes up.”
Another said, “I cannot prioritise because I am constantly buried under requests.”
These were not inexperienced employees or managers who lacked skills or did not understand prioritisation. They were experienced people managing large and complex projects.
Yet they were facing a common problem: everything had started feeling urgent.
I call this “ambient urgency” — a constant, low-level pressure where everything seems important, everything needs immediate attention, and nothing appears capable of waiting.
Unlike a temporary crisis, ambient urgency never really goes away. It becomes part of the organisation’s normal operating environment.
The challenge is therefore no longer simply about better time management or learning to say “no”. People must constantly decide what to pursue, what to postpone, what to delegate and what to stop altogether.
This is particularly difficult because continuous pressure also affects decision-making. When we make too many decisions without enough time to recover, decision fatigue sets in and the quality of subsequent decisions can decline.
So, how should we navigate this environment?
1. The Replacement Test
Ask yourself:
“Am I making this decision because only I can do it, or simply because I have become the default person to make it?”
People often hold on to responsibilities because they have been doing them for long. But being responsible for something does not mean personally owning every decision.
The people’s attention should go towards decisions that genuinely require their judgement — decisions that set direction, involve difficult trade-offs or cut across multiple functions.
2. The Compounding Test
Ask:
“Will this decision create value that grows over time, or is it simply helping me deal with today’s pressure?”
Urgency naturally pushes leaders towards immediate problems. But some decisions create benefits that compound over months and years.
Developing skills is a good example. Spending time learning and building technical skills may not produce an immediate result, but its benefits multiply over time. Ignoring Self development because of today’s workload can eventually lead to losing talent in us.
A CEO once described this distinction perfectly:
“Everything we are doing is important to the outcome, but maybe not equally important to the overall outcome.”
That is the difference between what is urgent today and what actually moves the Self towards its long-term destination.
3. The Fear Test
Ask:
“Am I postponing this decision because it is not the right decision, or because I do not want to deal with the consequences?”
Constant urgency can become a convenient excuse for avoiding difficult decisions.
For instance, we may simultaneously pursue AI adoption, operational improvement and time management. All three may appear important, but limited resources may make it impossible to execute all three effectively.
People may hesitate to drop one initiative because doing so feels like admitting failure. The result is often worse: all three initiatives move slowly and we may lose our valuable time.
Sometimes, stopping or reducing the scope of an initiative is not failure. It is responsible prioritisation.
The key is to recognise the real cost of inaction and make the trade-off consciously.
The Bigger Lesson
Most experienced people already use some version of these tests intuitively. The real benefit comes from making them explicit, consistent and repeatable across the organisation.
The old approach to leadership often assumed that excessive urgency was a sign of poor prioritisation or ineffective management.
But today’s business environment is different.
Urgency has become a normal operating condition.
The question is therefore not whether we can eliminate urgency. It is whether we can remain deliberate and thoughtful while operating within it.
The strongest leaders are not necessarily the ones who do the most.
They are the ones who can clearly identify what only they can do, what will create long-term value, and which difficult decisions they must stop avoiding.
In an environment where everything feels urgent, leadership is ultimately about making fewer, better and clearer decisions.