Sense of urgency

Short note: I wrote about pursuing life with a sense of urgency. Please reply to my email or comment here with good vibes. I also write a newsletter with commentary on how businesses make money. Newsletter link here.

Do you feel it? Do you feel the clock ticking away without a pause? It’s nearing midnight and you still have so much to do. It’s time to sleep but your list is still long. How do you deal with to-do lists that rack up day after day without completion? How do you push yourself when there is no visible downside to skipping your to-do list?

I chase a few goals every day. These goals are small, medium and big in scope. Depending on the day and the week, these goals vary and can replace one another. In hindsight, these goals should add up to a meaningful outcome, whatever your definition. In real time, you often don’t think that much. You think about the next play, the next conversation, the next meeting. Living life short term can result in long term regret. No one tells you this.

If you live life through a comparative lens, it is a hellscape. If you do not live without comparison, you are a buffoon. It’s unfair and I cannot blame anyone for choosing the easier path, the right-now-today decisions. Making sequential decisions is simpler. It pushes away your difficult feelings. We never want to feel bad. Why should we?

If we never feel bad, do we really know what feels good? If you never see the dark, can you appreciate the light? I don’t know. I know what feels terrible and what feels uplifting. The terrible stays for longer like an uninvited guest with their shoes on your bed. The good feeling, your favourite ice-cream in the depths of winter melts before you know it.

Feeling bad and feeling good is incidental to your sense of urgency. You have to do what it takes unimpeded by feelings. But these feelings are inextricable when it comes to your purpose. Your purpose is shaped by how you feel when you make certain decisions. Once you realise how it feels to do the right thing, you only want to do the right things.

A sense of urgency can be the single greatest driver in your life. It pushes you to make 100s of micro decisions that impact your whole life— this is it. It is the courage to do things with unfathomable optimism that it will all work out. This is madness with a plan tacked on at a later date. If you could pursue your one wild glorious life, why wouldn’t it be with a sense of urgency?