The Urgency Challenge

I've been thinking lately about what makes something urgent. Why do we prioritize? How do we pick what we work day and night to get done versus what we let slide on our to-do list? I've been thinking about it because there are so many things that I think should be urgent that others apparently don't. My conclusion so far - pleasure and pain. We either apply ourselves with urgency to something because that will result in us achieving greater rewards, or we do it because failing to do so will cause us some sort of pain. Urgency can be applied at the personal level and at the organizational level. An organization will have an expectation of urgency if those in charge believe that applying the resources of the company to its products with urgency will result in greater rewards or not will result in greater loss or pain. Urgency and power are interrelated.