One day, I was explaining to a client the downsides of chronic stress on productivity when he made a remark that stopped me in my tracks:

“It’s interesting because I’ve always felt that I work better when I’m under pressure or on a deadline.”

I had heard this said in a form or another several time in the past, but had dismissed it with a “it’s different. It’s all in the intensity.” That time, though, I stopped to really think about it. Why was it that, whenever I talked about reducing the stress of coming up to a deadline by starting the project well ahead, several clients had initially reacted with a “but I work better when a deadline is looming”?

Some analysis, a look back to my own experience, and an article I happened to read a couple of days later gave me the answer: those clients confused urgency and emergency.

As per the dictionary, urgency is an earnest and insistent necessity. We need to get things done, we have no time to waste. It gives us focus and drive.

Emergency, on the other hand, is defined as a sudden unforeseen (but not necessarily unforeseeable) crisis that requires immediate action. Adrenalin courses through our veins, we need to react immediately. It gives us focus, but also a lot of stress, or even panic (remember being in ‘panic mode’ to finish a project?). As a result, a lot of the benefits of focus are offset by the downsides of stress: the work is not nearly as good and accurate as it could (sometimes should) be, and the process takes a huge toll on everyone involved.

What my clients were really after was the focus resulting from urgency, not the unholy brew created by emergency. Yet, not knowing how to create urgency, they often created emergency instead – by leaving work for the last minute, not thinking of alternate plans for possible problems, etc. -, thinking that way they would get the focus they were looking for.

So how can you create urgency in your work and in your life, rather than emergency?

First, you need to be clear on your vision or your priorities. It’s hard to create urgency around something that doesn’t matter to you.

Then, you need to set a deadline, if one doesn’t already exist. Urgency can’t exist when there isn’t an end in sight. As someone who runs her own business, I often don’t have deadlines imposed to me by the outside world, the way someone in the corporate world would have. So I create them. I set deadlines for myself to complete a given project, and if the project is a long-term one, I create multiple intermediary deadlines, so that I don’t procrastinate and then find myself in an emergency instead of urgency.

Finally, you need accountability. I found that making deadlines for myself wasn’t that effective. I’m not one of those people who work well being accountable to myself only. Something that works a lot better for me is to set a deadline, then announce it to the world. It’s a lot harder for me to feel like I have all the time in the world when my credibility is on the line.

Your turn:

Pick a project for which you don’t feel any urgency, even if intellectually you know it would be a good thing to start it now. Why are you not feeling any urgency?

Is it a lack of vision or motivation? What would motivate you to do this project? Is it knowing that your children’s children will be able to see/use it? Is it that your boss will be mad if you don’t do this project? Is it that if you do this project, it will improve your chances of getting promoted? Find the motivation that works for you.

Is it that the deadline seems too far into the future, and that you have all the time in the world? Then decompose your project into smaller sub-projects, and give each a deadline that gives you little milestones within sight at every step of the project. This will keep you moving forward.

Is it that it doesn’t matter whether you meet your deadline or not? Then publicize your deadline. Let people whose opinion you care about know about it. In particular, I guarantee you that if you send your manager an email outlining the sub-projects and deadlines you chose above, you will feel the urgent necessity to meet them.

Author – Karin Stewart, PhD, founder of Daily Mastery, is the author of the 5-Minute Time Management Solution and your Peaceful Productivity Mentor. She teaches people around the world how to get more of the right things done, in less time, and without the stress, so that her clients can have peace of mind, control, and the life they want, using simple yet powerful tools that take just a few minutes a day.