Okay, Actually is a podcast for people who are working hard and starting to wonder if the problem is them. It's not. In under 30 minutes, we dig into what's truly broken and figure out how to build a solution that can actually work.

In this episode, I get into urgency: what it actually does to your brain, why fake urgency is so hard to call out, and why fire drill culture costs you more than just your Tuesday afternoons. If you've ever hung up on a work call for an issue at home (or vice versa), this episode's for you.

00:00 A Daughter's Emergency

01:47 What Urgency Does

04:24 Bin Gate

05:32 Real vs Fake Urgency

07:56 Too Many Channels

10:09 Fire Drill Culture

13:44 Holidays Reveal Truth

15:11 Three Filtering Questions

17:10 Recalibrate Your Alarm

Three questions to ask before you respond to something "urgent:"

1. Whose urgency is this? Did I generate it, or did someone hand it to me? Is this actually mine to own?
2. What actually happens if I wait? Real urgency has a real answer. Manufactured urgency evaporates, resolves without you, or turns out to be someone else's anxiety.
3. Is this urgent, or is it just loud? Volume is not severity. The number of channels someone uses to reach you is not a measure of importance.

Referenced in this episode: The High Cost of Fake Urgency in the Workplace — Quartz, April 2026

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A couple of years ago, I was on a work call.

2

I'm definitely not gonna pretend it was

the most important meeting of the week,

3

but it was important, and I was trying

to stay focused when I started getting

4

text messages from our youngest daughter

saying there was a huge emergency.

5

We had to call her immediately.

6

Everything was awful and falling apart.

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And I started to get nervous,

and I hung up on the call, just

8

saying, you know, "I'm so sorry.

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I'm getting messages from my daughter.

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This is an emergency."

11

And the next update I get from her is

that, uh, the dress that she ordered from

12

Rent the Runway didn't fit and wasn't

going to work for the formal event that

13

weekend, and she had nothing to wear

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I wanna be clear, I actually

do consider that an emergency.

15

It's just more of the call me

as soon as you're free emergency

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instead of the drop what you're doing

and call me right now emergency.

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Big line between those two, which was

the subject of the entire conversation we

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had, uh, after resolving the dress issue.

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And to be honest, it's s- it's actually

kind of hard for me to be that critical

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because any sort of flair for the

dramatic that was being exhibited here

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definitely did not come from my husband.

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It was obviously me who had been

modeling and starring in urgency

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theater, and I did it so well my kid

was able to perform it right back

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at me, and I fell for it completely.

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When I got that message, I

didn't think for a second about

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not hanging up on the call.

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I knew hanging up was the most

important thing for me to do, which

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is not a failure at parenting, and

since it only happened once, it was

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definitely not a failure at parenting.

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But that's what urgency does.

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It closes your thinking window before

you even have an opportunity to open it

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I'm Karen Doak.

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This is OK Actually, where we get clear,

get sorted, get going, and stay sane.

34

This week, we're going to talk about

urgency, what it actually does,

35

what it creates, and the impact it

has on you and the people around

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you, personally and professionally

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So if we take a step back and think

about what urgency really does, it

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collapses the distance or the gap

that's between something is happening

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and I must do something right now.

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If you're really trying to figure

out what you should be doing, what an

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actual problem is, you need a gap in

time to be able to think about it, and

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urgency eliminates that every time.

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We've had a couple of conversations on

past episodes of this podcast already

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about misdiagnosis and ground truth

and friction and measuring the wrong

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things and hiring towards problems

we haven't named, and this episode

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is about what makes all of those

things harder to catch, the thing

47

that closes the diagnostic window

before, before you can even open it.

48

Alarms are going off all the time.

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I shared an example previously of

a customer who called me screaming

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about a software outage when there

was definitely not an outage.

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That's the professional version of this.

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Someone feels urgency, they escalate,

they take it to more people.

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Nobody stops to ask whether the alarm

means anything, partly because in that

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situation, you tend to trust and follow

the lead of the person acting that way,

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but that person has also not stopped

to question whether this really means

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anything beyond misdirected frustration

Not being able to think properly when

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you're operating under urgency isn't

just a bad habit or a skill gap.

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There's a real physiological

reason it's hard.

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Quartz had a piece on this in April,

"The High Cost of Fake Urgency in the

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Workplace," and it put this plainly,

quoting a therapist who said, "Once that

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pressure crosses someone's threshold,

the brain starts shifting out of higher

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order thinking and into fight, flight,

or freeze, and in that state, people

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are no longer learning, reflecting,

or problem-solving at their best.

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Their capacity for creativity, judgment,

emotional regulation, and nuanced

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decision-making starts to narrow."

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Making the right diagnosis, thinking

through a problem carefully, these

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are higher order thinking tasks, and

urgency literally switches off the

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part of your brain that can do them.

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A moment that lives rent-free in my

head is from an early season of The

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Great British Bake Off, where the

bakers had to make Baked Alaska on

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a particularly hot day, which is…

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I will just say something

that's very annoying to me.

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I don't know why they're always tempering

chocolate and making ice cream on the

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hottest day of the year, but I have

not yet been hired to consult on that

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show, although I am certainly available.

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Ian's Baked Alaska was melting

after a mishap with another baker.

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It was definitely an accident.

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No one needs to blame Diana for this.

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And instead of letting the judges taste

the components or have something to

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see, imperfect as it was, he threw it

in the bin and walked out of the tent.

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This has caused a scandal that

was referred to as Bin Gate, and

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frankly, he looked like a total ass.

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Because he had nothing to

present, he was eliminated.

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S- If he'd done nothing,

he'd have had something.

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Then the bin was the urgency response.

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The counter was the, the diagnostic

or the thoughtful response, and his

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thinking window completely closed, and

the decision he made was objectively

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worse than no decision at all.

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It's not a huge deal if urgency only

happens when something really is on

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fire, but fake urgency, the kind we feel

constantly, is creating a real problem.

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What that looks like in

practice is you're never really

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solving what you need to solve.

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You're just responding to an alarm, and

those two activities are not the same.

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So if you think about the last fire drill

you really dealt with at work, at home,

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wherever, and ask yourself whether you

solved the problem or whether you just

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put out whatever flames were touching you

at the minute, I think you'd acknowledge

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that those are totally different

activities We've all heard that if

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everything's an emergency, then nothing's

an emergency, and that's absolutely true.

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Not all urgency is fake.

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Some things really are on fire.

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The court's piece lists the real

exceptions in a workplace context, like

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risk of missing payroll, a security

breach, loss of a major client, a

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company-defining strategic deal.

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And personally, we tend to go

back to health and medical.

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Is someone bleeding?

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Is something, like, actually on fire?

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Is there anything that's going to require

intervention from a professional with

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additional expertise happening here?

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So that's-- there's a more useful

distinction, the difference between true

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market urgency, which is real external

pressure, you know, a competitor move or

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something happening with a customer, or a

really short window or an actual medical

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situation, and manufactured urgency.

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Manufactured urgency is anxiety in a

costume playing the role of leadership,

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and that key word is anxiety.

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False urgency usually isn't malicious.

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My daughter wasn't trying to create panic.

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She was anxious, and that was real.

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But false urgency is someone's unprocessed

fear looking for a place to go.

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The client from the outage

example wasn't evil.

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He was panicking, and he had a

phone, and unfortunately my phone

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number, and the ability to keep

calling until he got an answer.

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Getting someone to respond

is one of the easiest ways to

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quell that anxiety for people.

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So how can we model our own responses

to urgency in a way that teaches others

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that they can take a breath and pause

rather than continuing to pass anxiety

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down the line in some sort of really

fucked up pay it forward dynamic?

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One of the specific challenges of twenty

twenty-six is that we're all reachable

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on so many different channels, and more

channels means more ways for people to

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manufacture urgency, intentionally or not.

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Being reachable on phone, text, WhatsApp,

Signal, email, and Slack means someone

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who really wants to reach you is going

to try all those ways, and that doesn't

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mean the issue is more important.

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It may just mean they have the free

time to harass you in the moment.

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We've been trained to read volume of

contact as a signal of importance.

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Someone who texts and then emails

and then Slacks and then calls

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isn't technically telling me their

issue is critical, but I've been

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trained to interpret it that way.

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What I should actually be

realizing is they're not telling

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me something's a problem.

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They're telling me that they

are in a state of panic.

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The number of channels someone

uses to reach you is not a measure

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of the issue's severity, it's a

measure of their anxiety level.

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You can't always fix your accessibility,

but you can stop letting delivery

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method be the verdict on priority.

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I could get three missed calls from my

father and assume there's a major problem,

146

but two of them are butt dials, and one

was an apology for butt dialing me twice.

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Just because someone has a smartphone

and your number saved doesn't mean

148

that they get to interrupt your day.

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I had a previous boss who

pinged me on one channel.

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I was unfortunately in the bathroom,

so it took me four minutes to respond.

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When I came back and replied,

she said, "Don't worry."

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She'd checked my calendar and decided

to jump into the next meeting I w-

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had on Zoom, and we could talk there.

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But that brought in a whole other person,

derailed a whole other agenda, and

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prevented the two of us from having the

conversation we actually needed to have.

156

All of that driven by where

she was emotionally, not by

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anything that was on fire.

158

And was whatever we were talking about

so urgent it couldn't wait four minutes?

159

N- no, it certainly could wait for,

dare I say, six or seven minutes

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Fire drill culture is becoming the norm.

161

There's a big difference between

individual manufactured urgency and

162

organizational manufactured urgency.

163

Fake urgency looks like initiative to

people who don't care about details.

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"Oh, Bob's always busy.

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Bob's always doing something."

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It's this costume of productivity

without the actual work.

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Fire drill culture is what

happens when manufactured urgency

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becomes the operating mode.

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It's not an event anymore.

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It's the climate.

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It's the constant state When you

were in school, you had maybe

172

one or two fire drills a year.

173

We had a few more this one year in

elementary school when there was

174

a kid who kept pulling the fire

alarm falsely, and then the cops

175

came, which was, like, a huge deal

in my small town of five thousand.

176

But outside of that, let's just assume

standard was once or twice a year, and

177

that meant that the alarm meant something.

178

But in a workplace where the fire

drill's happening constantly, it

179

becomes ambient noise and an excuse

for why nothing else is moving.

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Everyone is performing a response

to whatever the emergency is as a

181

substitute for doing actual work.

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And when absolutely everything

around you is feeling urgent, people

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stop thinking effectively, and they

start to lose trust in whoever is

184

sending out the urgency signal.

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It goes back to everything that that

therapist said in the Quartz piece.

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If people are losing their capacity

for creativity, judgment, emotional

187

regulation, and nuanced decision-making,

that is a huge problem in any environment.

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Those are some of the most critical

skills I can possibly think of for any

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person or organization to be operating

at their best, and they're being

190

hampered by something we're allowing

to be a norm that doesn't need to be.

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When we normalize urgency,

urgency means nothing, and that's

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not just an individual problem.

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It's an organizational one.

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I worked one place where the fire

drill culture was entirely driven by a

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big executive meeting every Thursday.

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We always knew that sometime late Tuesday

afternoon, somebody was gonna be asked

197

about data, reporting that probably didn't

exist or slides that needed to be made

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or something that no one could find.

199

That part was normalized, but nobody

knew who the person was gonna be who'd be

200

asked, what data was going to be required,

what random question was gonna come

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through, so it was impossible to prepare.

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God forbid anyone be given enough warning

to actually plan their time effectively.

203

And we all just ended up kind of twiddling

our thumbs from four PM on on Tuesdays,

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waiting to find out whose afternoon

and evening was about to get destroyed.

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Normalized urgency leads to us

anticipating and assuming emergencies

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and then operating with that in mind.

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In that environment, people stop starting

things that require sustained attention

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on Tuesday afternoons because they've

learned that it would get interrupted,

209

and that's the organizational pattern.

210

A- and it, and it doesn't stay at work.

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When urgency is the constant operating

mode, you start making the same

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calculation in the rest of your life.

213

You stop signing up for things.

214

You pre-cancel.

215

You build smaller.

216

You do less.

217

You commit to less.

218

In one fire drill-laden culture, I

didn't book travel for a three-day

219

charity walk with friends because

I knew something would come up,

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and I wouldn't be able to go.

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I stopped calling my dad

on a regular schedule.

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I didn't book a trip to visit

my daughter on the West Coast.

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Not because urgency took those things from

me, but because I'd already learned not

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to count on having the space for them.

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And that's the real cost of

sustained fire drill culture.

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Not just the things it interrupts,

but the things you stop attempting All

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of this has been top of mind because

we've just had Memorial Day weekend,

228

and I think holidays become a really

useful data point in this conversation

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because they impose a boundary that

most people can't impose for themselves.

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It's hard to tell a client they'll

be fine if they don't get something

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until Monday, but it's a lot easier

to say, "Oh, it's a holiday weekend.

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Nobody's around.

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Is Tuesday okay?"

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Yeah, everyone's fine with that.

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It creates a very different

culture about what's urgent,

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And within that, it starts to

reveal what issues and requests

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were actually load-bearing.

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A lot of people are surprised

by how little couldn't wait.

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There are fires that put themselves

out, issues that just needed time

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and a few deep breaths before people,

you know, calmed down in a way they

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couldn't when they were screaming fire.

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And, and I'm not talking

about unplugging as self-care.

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I'm talking about the visibility

a few days away gives you.

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What could wait?

245

What could you postpone?

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What you actually lose sleep over?

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What you could let move slower?

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That's useful diagnostic information.

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A few days away will tell you

more about your urgency culture

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than any formal assessment.

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The fires that survive a long weekend

are worth your full attention.

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They're still burning.

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But a lot of what has people

running around on Thursday

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and Friday, not real fires.

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In the interest of giving you something

concrete to work with, y- you're

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not trying to eliminate urgency.

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That's totally unrealistic, but

you do wanna restore it as a valid

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signal and make it mean something,

and not let it be a management

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style or, God help us, a personality

trait that you pass on to others.

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Whether you're dealing with an angsty

teen before prom, a frustrated customer,

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a dysfunctional leadership team, or a

spouse who only communicates some of the

262

information you need but leaves critical

pieces blank like some kind of Mad

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Lib, having a way to filter is helpful.

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It restores the gap for you, and

it lets you actually question

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whether something is truly urgent.

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So the questions I ask myself in this

situation , first, whose urgency is this?

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Did I generate it?

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Did someone hand it to me?

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Is this actually mine to own?

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That's kind of key, figuring

out the origin and the owner.

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Second, what actually happens if I wait?

272

Real urgency has a real answer.

273

Manufactured urgency evaporates,

resolves without you, or turns out

274

to be someone else's anxiety and

not an action you needed to take.

275

And third, is this urgent,

or is it just loud?

276

Volume is not severity.

277

The number of channels or number

of times someone reaches out to

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you is not a measure of importance.

279

You may be familiar with the Eisenhower

Matrix, but it separates urgent

280

from important on two different axes

because they're not the same thing.

281

Urgency is about time pressure.

282

Importance is about actual consequence.

283

A lot of what feels urgent is neither.

284

The goal isn't to be the

person who never feels urgency.

285

It's to be the person who can tell the

difference between a Rent the Runway

286

situation and an actual emergency.

287

Most of us have lost that calibration,

and if you're the person who can bring

288

actual calm and order to a panicking

room, that is rare, and it is worth

289

so much So my question for you is, how

many fire drills did you have this week?

290

Can you count them?

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If you can't, that's

another kind of problem.

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Either way, it's important information.

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That alarm is supposed to mean something.

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If it's going off all day, every day,

you're not in a high-stakes environment,

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you're in a dysfunctional one, unless

you're working in an emergency room.

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But even then, there's a triage

system, and we did already learn

297

from The Pit that only the worst

doctors are the ones stuck on triage.

298

So if this is happening, if alarms are

going off all the time, again, it's not

299

about being in a high-stakes environment,

it's about being in a poorly managed one.

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Or maybe you built a poorly

managed one, or maybe you've

301

perpetuated that poorly managed one.

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These things are all fixable,

but only if you're willing to

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acknowledge what's actually happening.

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I started this talking about hanging up on

a work call for a Rent the Runway dress.

305

The dress was not an emergency, but the

truth is the call was probably fine, too.

306

Most things honestly are.

307

Getting your alarm calibrated

is the key to everything here.

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So thank you so much for listening.

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I'm Karen Doak, and this has been

OK Actually, where we get clear, get

310

sorted, get going, and stay sane.