If everything is urgent, nothing is urgent

It’s 8.57am on a Tuesday. The calendar is already full, but your phone buzzes with a “quick” Teams message. An email pings in from a member of staff marked urgent. Then another. By 9.10am, your quiet start to the day has dissolved into triage.

Sound familiar?

It’s the modern workplace in full swing. Everything matters, and my goodness, everything’s pressing!

And if you’re leading people right now, you probably feel like you’re forever catching your breath between fires.

The trouble is, when everything is urgent, nothing really is.

The weight of constant urgency

We’ve normalised a low key sense of crisis. It’s become part of the soundtrack of work. From the weekly “critical update” to the never-ending stream of “top priorities”, teams are drowning in noise.

And the cost is real. Productivity is slipping, burnout is creeping higher, and trust is eroding. People start to disengage not because they don’t care, but because they can’t tell what matters anymore.

Hybrid work hasn’t exactly helped, where the line between “important” and “instant” has blurred. A quick message now replaces a proper conversation, the kind where you can read tone, body language, and subtle personal cues to judge whether something truly is urgent. Without that human context, every request starts to feel like a priority.

Deadlines are shorter, meetings are longer, and the mental load never really ends. The constant hum of urgency is exhausting.

Add to that the new psychosocial hazard code of practice, which highlights how relentless pressure can create risk, and it’s clear why HR and People & Culture leaders are feeling the squeeze.

Leaders are expected to protect wellbeing, deliver results, manage culture, and stay on top of everything, often all at once. But trying to move fast on every front isn’t leadership. It’s survival.

The power of pause

So yes, the fix isn’t another priority list. It’s needs a bit of a mindset shift.

When everything feels urgent, can you confidently step back and ask: what truly needs to happen now? Because clearly not everything deserves the same energy.

Some things can wait. Some can be done differently. And some might not need doing at all.

Urgency feeds on emotion. It pulls us into action before we’ve had a chance to think. But perspective is what creates progress. And that perspective, that confidence, can come from data, not guesswork.

(Disclaimer - as a Data Analyst at Teamgage you may expect me to say that, but it's true!)

Because when you’ve got real-time insights from your people about how things are going, you gain clarity. You can see what’s important to them, to their team, and to the organisation as a whole. That’s the kind of visibility that builds that confidence. You’re no longer guessing what matters most, because the data shows you.

I've seen how amazing AI can be in creating an analysis of team results that points leaders directly to where their focus should and shouldn’t be. From there, honestly, your judgment as a leader simply takes over. You act with purpose instead of panic.

It's like the story I heard the other day about trying to run a business without up-to-date financial figures. You’d be flying here, there and everywhere, stressing about money spent and money earned, completely blind to the reality. It’s the same with your people, your "most important asset". You need that same up-to-date people information to act confidently in the areas that matter, and just as confidently say no to those that don’t.

Tools like Teamgage make that kind of real-time clarity possible, helping leaders move from a constant state of reaction to one of focus and intent.

What to remember

If everything is urgent, nothing is.

So pause, reframe and get clarity on what’s really worth your focus.