Tim, both love and take some issue with this article, so well done. Agree with 90% of it, and I appreciate the urgency (pun intended). The 10% I disagree with is the black-and-white approach to how you write about burnout, which I’ve picked up on in other posts. I am coming out of a Hustle Culture situation and have had multiple colleagues die in their 20s and 30s from complication of burnout. One example: Undiagnosed diabetes because the person would never allow himself to hit pause on the sense of urgency and go to the doctor to find out his sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyle and awful diet had drowned his systems in blood sugar. Millions of people experience burnout without dying. Of the 70+ percent who indicated some level of burnout in 2016, only 745,000 deaths were attributed that year to overwork. It’s true, as you write, that people can grit it out and hate their lives and ruin all their relationships for jobs they hate working on someone else’s dream and not die, and that’s a choice they make. More power to them. What I think we can agree on that isn’t in the article is that there’s a difference between a sense of urgency and being addicted to work in a way that causes permanent damage or in extreme cases, death. You can absolutely work insane hours and get more done in 90 days than other people get done in 5 years and make all the money and buy all the things if that’s your thing and you work in sprints. If you try to keep that up 24/7/365 for years without a break and completely ignoring your physical and mental health, it is true bad things will happen (not social media melodrama writing, actual research-backed facts). There is no one-size-fits-all on either side of an argument for or against urgency and rest/recovery periods because every single human needs something that’s specific to them. So I agree with the importance of urgency and using focused sprints to actually do things, it’s worked incredibly well for me. I also make it my mission to raise awareness about the dangers of burnout and at least inform people if they want to opt into the 24/7/365 psychotic work environment of Hustle Culture that’s their choice, but it’s important to name and accept the risks because they are real. It’s just biology. Bodies and minds aren’t made to work at that pace for extended periods. Last point, burnout doesn’t ALWAYS present as a feeling or mood or hating your job. You can absolutely be in flow states all day long and loving it and still be doing silent damage to physical health. And maybe that shouldn’t be called burnout and should be called something else to avoid confusion and permission people to take productive rest as part of their urgency strategy. You’ve given me a lot to think about here for my own writing as your work always does.
This essay reminded me of my sense of urgency two decades ago when I was obsessed with natural sciences. Then I bought my first iPhone and the sense of urgency faded. I'm getting it back again. Slowly, consciously this time.
Great post. Halfway through I was like, "I need to read this as a reminder every morning." And the line about the bank treating you like a rounding error - that hit deep. Been there, perfect analogy.
I find this article both inspiring in the sense that it makes me want to double down on my goals but also disheartening in the sense that this level of commitment to work isn’t realistic for the majority of parents
I agree, Shlee! I also think this is why more men have bigger successes than women. That's not an insult to either gender. We just have different priorities.
But it also gives me the urge to dig deeper and do more than what I'm currently doing.
Same. I want to do more, so there’s that. But I’m not willing to sacrifice my time with my kids whereas perhaps more men are ok with forgoing family time in order to achieve their goals.
All I know is I’m kicking myself for not taking advantage of the time I have before kids!
To be fair, I think men have a biological desire to provide for their families (which is good), and that's why it's worth them to forgo time with family. Whereas we have the biological urge to nurture our family. (Generally speaking.) But we also have the desire to provide financially too. It's hard to do both equally well. Damned if we do, and damned if we don't!
So true, Christina. I’ve accepted the fact that I won’t be able to work the way I want to until all my kids move out (which means I have 14 years to go 😆)
This hit hard, Tim. Urgency is a superpower, and it’s carried me through more than one pivotal chapter.
Back in the early 2000s, lack of opportunity pushed me to create my own. I launched a video production company from scratch and iterated fast...learning on the fly, selling before I was ready. That business carried me through college, grad school, and eventually all the way to Google.
Then in 2023, laid off after 13 years, I returned to that same instinct. Less than 78 hours after getting the email, I was building again - two businesses this time. From scratch. That level of velocity worked. It carried me for almost a year and a half.
Until I realized it was also unraveling me.
That’s when I remembered something deeper:
“The times are urgent, we must slow down.” —Bayo Akomolafe
Execution matters. So does recovery. So does reflection.
Now, I build in stillness like it’s part of the strategy. because it has to be. One week per quarter, no tech, just nature. Not a vacation. A recalibration. A chance to return more responsive, not reactive. More intentional, not just fast.
Sprint and rest. Sprint and rest.
Urgency without presence will burn you out. But the right rhythm? That’s priceless.
You don't get burned out by working on things you hate. You get burned out by working on anything limitlessly like an maniacal idiot—even if it's dear to your heart.
Setting ridiculously deadlines will not push you if you've always broken under them. Imposing more pressure on yourself than you can handle deliberatly is the worst thing you could do to your soul.
Plus giving up altogether will seem like a very tempting choice every time you brush with failure. Losing yourself in the process is not worth it.
This came at a perfect time. I am starting a business and with a baby and a toddler it’s been hard to keep up but I’m trying. My husband always tells me that this sense of urgency is gonna drive me crazy so thank you for this articles and making me feel like I am not the only one that has to do everything the moment it comes to my head. I loved this article! Already shared it.
I have two speeds: very fast and very slow.... yes some things I should now do fast, subconsciously I think I avoid going into top gear often because I got burned out before. Job content and job perception thats what burned me out... I take note of this, I think you need to stop looking cool and have a rocket up your arse to move the dial. Just make sure it has purpose and meaning to you, then sprint and rest, sprint and rest. Just like were mean to..
Years ago I went headlong into I suppose what could be called burnout, a surgical training program, working 90-100 hours/wk. I always felt it would have been completely tolerable except for that my superiors and some of my colleagues were a mixture of toxic, strange, unhappy and completely unsupportive people. It was my own naivete to think I’d find some community and sense of mission, instead of egos, immaturity, and pettiness, and it was my failure to not recognize this, trust myself and adjust accordingly.
(I also came to believe that there was a misdirection of resources towards the actual problems we were ostensibly addressing, but that was my naivete regarding the perverse incentives of the field - another story. Overall a failure on my part to see reality, and a failure of imagination, to see other possibilities. All necessary for my development.)
Working at anything seriously is not going to be enjoyable at all times, would you not agree? Even or especially in the case of starting your own business, alone or with a small number of partners. So how do you manage that, to keep physical and mental health optimal?
Also I would claim that for any endeavor that requires either deep thought or creativity ( surgical training requires neither), the brain must be well rested, with daily or at least frequent periods of shifting attention to something else, taking a walk, meditating, or intense physical activity. It seems some very highly productive creative people do their real work in only a. 4-5 hr window each day.
Yes if you’re grinding, doing things that don’t require deep thought or creativity, you can work 18 hr days, or if you’re having a literal manic episode (not good, actually dangerous, although many prominent people in history have been legitimately bipolar) but that will, inevitably, have consequences on your health - cortisol, weight gain, immune dysfunction leading to cancer, to name a few. There are numerous long term health problems from inadequate sleep including dementia.
But yeah, for sure there have been many examples of psychotically driven people whom are “successful”, by some measure, leaving chaos in their wake, insufferable to be around, with devastation in their personal and family relationships, not to mention their own health.
I’d prefer a sustainable, virtuous cycle model. The focus is still there, but the outcomes might change because it’s more important to stay true to yourself.
I agree with two things that seem to align with what you’re saying
1. The need for focus
2. The need to love the process in a large sense, understanding things will be challenging.
Hi, Thanks for this. After reading these comments, I realized that people are misunderstanding this concept. Its not about working yourself to death. Its about execution in the now rather than doing it someday. Its about doing less and prioritizing what's important. Without this sense of urgency on things that really matter, it wont get done. You can also extend this urgency to health, eating on time, rather than postponing it to later. A sense of urgency that reclaims boundaries for someone who has lost these or has vague bounadaries around their own goals and purpose could make one very successful.
Yes I get the urgency. Reach deep inside yourself, find your deep desire, start working on it today, because life is short, and things get in the way - so believe in yourself, take risks.
All good. Practically speaking, it’s still a balance. I know my father had a chance to join a small biotech company and potentially make a lot of money, but he had three small kids, hadn’t finished his PhD yet, it would’ve required moving, and so he calculated it wasn’t a risk he could take - moving the family, maybe the company would fail and he’d have less job security. His dept head strung him along, had given him an almost impossible project and that kept him there, cheap labor (he did finish but the opportunity had passed). Commitments build up.
I’ve wanted to write an action thriller all my life and I’m now 58.
I have at least started. Well, I started in March last year. I’ve pushed out the deadline from September to December to March then April and now the end of May.
There are excuses. An aging father who needed additional care in April as I started to close in on the finishing lap. The other reasons that I’ve told myself were acceptable were far more avoidable than that.
But the harsh truth is that I have treated ‘tomorrow’ as acceptable throughout.
Even more harsh and true is that I’ve done that my entire working life.
I have had many successes and many things that others would say look like success. I’ve been lucky and unlucky.
But the truth is I’m a clever bloke and I do work hard. Sadly, it’s also true that I’ve never worked hard enough with enough focus.
I’ll use the word hope and say that I hope I will finish this first book by the end of this May.
Reading this post has made me realise that it’s possible and it’s only me and my vicissitudes that will stop it happening.
Hey, I read this on my mail and logged in right away just to put a like and leave a thank you message.
This bias towards action is a muscle that needs practice to grow. For those of us who have decades of conditionning to undo...let's just do it, even if one tiny step at a time :)
Hi Tim, the one area I often struggle with is deciding on what of all the interesting things I should work on. I am an extremely curious individual. Paralysis often kicks in when it becomes an internal debate about which one is best, is this skill I’ll learn and put weeks/months of work in to really worth it… how do you narrow down and keep your focus on that one thing when there are so many things we can all turn our hands to?
Tim, both love and take some issue with this article, so well done. Agree with 90% of it, and I appreciate the urgency (pun intended). The 10% I disagree with is the black-and-white approach to how you write about burnout, which I’ve picked up on in other posts. I am coming out of a Hustle Culture situation and have had multiple colleagues die in their 20s and 30s from complication of burnout. One example: Undiagnosed diabetes because the person would never allow himself to hit pause on the sense of urgency and go to the doctor to find out his sleep deprivation, sedentary lifestyle and awful diet had drowned his systems in blood sugar. Millions of people experience burnout without dying. Of the 70+ percent who indicated some level of burnout in 2016, only 745,000 deaths were attributed that year to overwork. It’s true, as you write, that people can grit it out and hate their lives and ruin all their relationships for jobs they hate working on someone else’s dream and not die, and that’s a choice they make. More power to them. What I think we can agree on that isn’t in the article is that there’s a difference between a sense of urgency and being addicted to work in a way that causes permanent damage or in extreme cases, death. You can absolutely work insane hours and get more done in 90 days than other people get done in 5 years and make all the money and buy all the things if that’s your thing and you work in sprints. If you try to keep that up 24/7/365 for years without a break and completely ignoring your physical and mental health, it is true bad things will happen (not social media melodrama writing, actual research-backed facts). There is no one-size-fits-all on either side of an argument for or against urgency and rest/recovery periods because every single human needs something that’s specific to them. So I agree with the importance of urgency and using focused sprints to actually do things, it’s worked incredibly well for me. I also make it my mission to raise awareness about the dangers of burnout and at least inform people if they want to opt into the 24/7/365 psychotic work environment of Hustle Culture that’s their choice, but it’s important to name and accept the risks because they are real. It’s just biology. Bodies and minds aren’t made to work at that pace for extended periods. Last point, burnout doesn’t ALWAYS present as a feeling or mood or hating your job. You can absolutely be in flow states all day long and loving it and still be doing silent damage to physical health. And maybe that shouldn’t be called burnout and should be called something else to avoid confusion and permission people to take productive rest as part of their urgency strategy. You’ve given me a lot to think about here for my own writing as your work always does.
Amen
This essay reminded me of my sense of urgency two decades ago when I was obsessed with natural sciences. Then I bought my first iPhone and the sense of urgency faded. I'm getting it back again. Slowly, consciously this time.
Great post. Halfway through I was like, "I need to read this as a reminder every morning." And the line about the bank treating you like a rounding error - that hit deep. Been there, perfect analogy.
High inspiring write-up. Thank you Tim for this wonderful article.
Much love. Anything stand out?
I find this article both inspiring in the sense that it makes me want to double down on my goals but also disheartening in the sense that this level of commitment to work isn’t realistic for the majority of parents
I agree, Shlee! I also think this is why more men have bigger successes than women. That's not an insult to either gender. We just have different priorities.
But it also gives me the urge to dig deeper and do more than what I'm currently doing.
Same. I want to do more, so there’s that. But I’m not willing to sacrifice my time with my kids whereas perhaps more men are ok with forgoing family time in order to achieve their goals.
All I know is I’m kicking myself for not taking advantage of the time I have before kids!
To be fair, I think men have a biological desire to provide for their families (which is good), and that's why it's worth them to forgo time with family. Whereas we have the biological urge to nurture our family. (Generally speaking.) But we also have the desire to provide financially too. It's hard to do both equally well. Damned if we do, and damned if we don't!
So true, Christina. I’ve accepted the fact that I won’t be able to work the way I want to until all my kids move out (which means I have 14 years to go 😆)
This hit hard, Tim. Urgency is a superpower, and it’s carried me through more than one pivotal chapter.
Back in the early 2000s, lack of opportunity pushed me to create my own. I launched a video production company from scratch and iterated fast...learning on the fly, selling before I was ready. That business carried me through college, grad school, and eventually all the way to Google.
Then in 2023, laid off after 13 years, I returned to that same instinct. Less than 78 hours after getting the email, I was building again - two businesses this time. From scratch. That level of velocity worked. It carried me for almost a year and a half.
Until I realized it was also unraveling me.
That’s when I remembered something deeper:
“The times are urgent, we must slow down.” —Bayo Akomolafe
Execution matters. So does recovery. So does reflection.
Now, I build in stillness like it’s part of the strategy. because it has to be. One week per quarter, no tech, just nature. Not a vacation. A recalibration. A chance to return more responsive, not reactive. More intentional, not just fast.
Sprint and rest. Sprint and rest.
Urgency without presence will burn you out. But the right rhythm? That’s priceless.
Appreciate you putting this into words.
You don't get burned out by working on things you hate. You get burned out by working on anything limitlessly like an maniacal idiot—even if it's dear to your heart.
Setting ridiculously deadlines will not push you if you've always broken under them. Imposing more pressure on yourself than you can handle deliberatly is the worst thing you could do to your soul.
Plus giving up altogether will seem like a very tempting choice every time you brush with failure. Losing yourself in the process is not worth it.
Well done Tim.
This came at a perfect time. I am starting a business and with a baby and a toddler it’s been hard to keep up but I’m trying. My husband always tells me that this sense of urgency is gonna drive me crazy so thank you for this articles and making me feel like I am not the only one that has to do everything the moment it comes to my head. I loved this article! Already shared it.
I have two speeds: very fast and very slow.... yes some things I should now do fast, subconsciously I think I avoid going into top gear often because I got burned out before. Job content and job perception thats what burned me out... I take note of this, I think you need to stop looking cool and have a rocket up your arse to move the dial. Just make sure it has purpose and meaning to you, then sprint and rest, sprint and rest. Just like were mean to..
Tim I really love your writings.
Years ago I went headlong into I suppose what could be called burnout, a surgical training program, working 90-100 hours/wk. I always felt it would have been completely tolerable except for that my superiors and some of my colleagues were a mixture of toxic, strange, unhappy and completely unsupportive people. It was my own naivete to think I’d find some community and sense of mission, instead of egos, immaturity, and pettiness, and it was my failure to not recognize this, trust myself and adjust accordingly.
(I also came to believe that there was a misdirection of resources towards the actual problems we were ostensibly addressing, but that was my naivete regarding the perverse incentives of the field - another story. Overall a failure on my part to see reality, and a failure of imagination, to see other possibilities. All necessary for my development.)
Working at anything seriously is not going to be enjoyable at all times, would you not agree? Even or especially in the case of starting your own business, alone or with a small number of partners. So how do you manage that, to keep physical and mental health optimal?
Also I would claim that for any endeavor that requires either deep thought or creativity ( surgical training requires neither), the brain must be well rested, with daily or at least frequent periods of shifting attention to something else, taking a walk, meditating, or intense physical activity. It seems some very highly productive creative people do their real work in only a. 4-5 hr window each day.
Yes if you’re grinding, doing things that don’t require deep thought or creativity, you can work 18 hr days, or if you’re having a literal manic episode (not good, actually dangerous, although many prominent people in history have been legitimately bipolar) but that will, inevitably, have consequences on your health - cortisol, weight gain, immune dysfunction leading to cancer, to name a few. There are numerous long term health problems from inadequate sleep including dementia.
But yeah, for sure there have been many examples of psychotically driven people whom are “successful”, by some measure, leaving chaos in their wake, insufferable to be around, with devastation in their personal and family relationships, not to mention their own health.
I’d prefer a sustainable, virtuous cycle model. The focus is still there, but the outcomes might change because it’s more important to stay true to yourself.
I agree with two things that seem to align with what you’re saying
1. The need for focus
2. The need to love the process in a large sense, understanding things will be challenging.
Hi, Thanks for this. After reading these comments, I realized that people are misunderstanding this concept. Its not about working yourself to death. Its about execution in the now rather than doing it someday. Its about doing less and prioritizing what's important. Without this sense of urgency on things that really matter, it wont get done. You can also extend this urgency to health, eating on time, rather than postponing it to later. A sense of urgency that reclaims boundaries for someone who has lost these or has vague bounadaries around their own goals and purpose could make one very successful.
Yes I get the urgency. Reach deep inside yourself, find your deep desire, start working on it today, because life is short, and things get in the way - so believe in yourself, take risks.
All good. Practically speaking, it’s still a balance. I know my father had a chance to join a small biotech company and potentially make a lot of money, but he had three small kids, hadn’t finished his PhD yet, it would’ve required moving, and so he calculated it wasn’t a risk he could take - moving the family, maybe the company would fail and he’d have less job security. His dept head strung him along, had given him an almost impossible project and that kept him there, cheap labor (he did finish but the opportunity had passed). Commitments build up.
Shit! That’s me told.
I’ve wanted to write an action thriller all my life and I’m now 58.
I have at least started. Well, I started in March last year. I’ve pushed out the deadline from September to December to March then April and now the end of May.
There are excuses. An aging father who needed additional care in April as I started to close in on the finishing lap. The other reasons that I’ve told myself were acceptable were far more avoidable than that.
But the harsh truth is that I have treated ‘tomorrow’ as acceptable throughout.
Even more harsh and true is that I’ve done that my entire working life.
I have had many successes and many things that others would say look like success. I’ve been lucky and unlucky.
But the truth is I’m a clever bloke and I do work hard. Sadly, it’s also true that I’ve never worked hard enough with enough focus.
I’ll use the word hope and say that I hope I will finish this first book by the end of this May.
Reading this post has made me realise that it’s possible and it’s only me and my vicissitudes that will stop it happening.
So thanks, I guess!
Hey, I read this on my mail and logged in right away just to put a like and leave a thank you message.
This bias towards action is a muscle that needs practice to grow. For those of us who have decades of conditionning to undo...let's just do it, even if one tiny step at a time :)
I 100% know I have an issue with this. When I am psychopathic, things happen. And they happen quickly.
Hi Tim, the one area I often struggle with is deciding on what of all the interesting things I should work on. I am an extremely curious individual. Paralysis often kicks in when it becomes an internal debate about which one is best, is this skill I’ll learn and put weeks/months of work in to really worth it… how do you narrow down and keep your focus on that one thing when there are so many things we can all turn our hands to?
Lovely post, Tim! So true, all of your points. can't agree more!