The Addiction to Urgency
Why peace feels like panic, and why your brain treats a quiet Sunday like a threat.
We have all been there. You are at a nice lunch with a friend you haven’t seen in a while. Suddenly, their phone buzzes. They look at it, hesitate, and then answer it in the middle of your sentence. The call lasts 10 minutes and the momentum of the lunch is dead.
You sit there thinking: What was so urgent? What could possibly not wait 45 minutes? You judge them and tell yourself you would never be that rude.
I used to judge them, too. Until I looked at my own behavior at the dinner table.
The Internal Urgency
I don’t answer calls at lunch or at the dinner table. But I have a different glitch: I eat like I am running out of time. I have been trying to eat slower, but I find it nearly impossible. I finish my meals way before anyone else. At times, it feels as if I am stuffing myself because someone is going to take the food away from me.
But obviously, no one is going to take it. There is no famine obviously. I can start five minutes after everyone else. I try by consciously taking a break between bites. Really, I just pause, sit there and take a few breaths. But even then, the result is always the same: I win the race that no one else is running.
It is not like I am just hungrier than everyone else. I am just addicted to the pace.
After a long time watching myself and trying to slow down, I realized then that my friend on the phone and I have the same condition. We are both addicts. We are addicted to Urgency. It is a biological addiction to Urgency.
Archetypes of “The Rush”
My brain has spent 30 years in high-pressure environments—TV production, live broadcasts, financial trading. In those worlds, speed is an asset. “Done” is better than “Perfect.” Silence is expensive. Now, even though I am sitting at a calm dinner with friends, my biological engine is still revving at 8,000 RPM. It needs something to process quickly. So, it processes the food. For my friend, it’s the phone
Once I stopped judging and started observing, I realized this “Urgency Addiction” shows up everywhere. See if you recognize yourself in these three archetypes.
1. The Interrupter (Conversational Urgency)
Do you finish people’s sentences? I catch myself doing this constantly. I am not trying to be rude. But my brain is processing the conversation faster than their mouth can deliver it. I “can” predict where the sentence is going, so I jump in to “save time.”
“Yes, I know, the quarterly report...”
“Right, the logistics, got it.”
I am treating the conversation like a transaction. I want to get to the “point.” But connection doesn’t happen at the “point.” It happens in the pause. By rushing the dialogue, I get the data, but I kill the relationship.
2. The Pacer (Physical Urgency)
This shows up in many ways, but mostly in two common places: The Sidewalk and The Car.
The Walker: Watch people in a city, in the sidewalks. There are those who are late, and those who are simply incapable of walking slowly. They weave through tourists, annoyed by the pace of the world, cursing, checking their time on watch or the phone at the crosswalk.
The Driver: This is even more primal. We drive like animals, out of control. We tailgate the car in front of us, even though we can see the red light 100 yards ahead. We accelerate just to brake, accelerate again, brake.
If you ask The Pacer: “What happens if you arrive 2 minutes later?” The answer is usually: “Nothing.” They aren’t rushing toward a destination or a deadline. They are rushing because the sensation of “moving slowly” feels like death. Their body interprets “idling” as “wasting life.”
3. The Checker (Information Urgency)
This is the most common one. This is the friend at lunch, but also it is you in the elevator. The “In-Between Spaces”—the elevator ride, the checkout line, the red light—are moments of natural pause. They last 60 seconds. For the addicted brain, these 60 seconds feel like 6 minutes and are intolerable.
Next time watch what happens in an elevator, but really watch. As soon as the doors close, the phones come out. We aren’t checking for anything specific. But we are checking to dissolve the silence; to be alone with our own thoughts for 45 seconds feels like a threat. It opens the door to boredom, or much worse, to reflection. So we plug the gap with data.
The Biology of “The Baseline”
Why do we do this? Why is it so painful to just sit in the elevator, or chew the food slowly, or let the person finish their sentence?
It is because of Homeostasis. Your body is designed to maintain a stable environment. If you spend 20 years in a high-stress career (Corporate Survival Mode), your body adapts. It floods your system with cortisol and adrenaline every day. Eventually, your body decides that High Cortisol is the new normal. It sets the baseline at “Red Alert.”
Here is the trap: When you finally slow down, for example, when you take a vacation, or have a quiet Sunday, your cortisol levels drop below this high baseline.
Your brain detects this drop and panics. It thinks: “We are below acceptable levels! Something is wrong! We are unsafe!”It triggers a withdrawal symptom. It screams at you to do something to get the stress levels back up.
Pick a fight with your spouse.
Refresh the email (looking for a crisis).
Eat the food faster.
You aren’t rushing because there is a deadline. You are rushing to manufacture the stress your body has grown to expect. You are unconsciously creating action just to feel “normal.”
The Solution: Surfing the Urge
So, how do we break the loop? You cannot “willpower” your way to being calm. (I tried that with the food; I just ended up eating fast while being angry at myself).
You have to use a technique from addiction therapy called “Urge Surfing.”
The urge to rush (to check the phone, to speed up) is like a wave. It has a life cycle. Most of us act on it immediately. We feel the itch and we scratch it immediately. We check the phone. But if you don’t scratch it, the wave follows a pattern:
Phase 1: The Rise. You are in the elevator. The door closes. You feel the itch. Your hand moves to your pocket. Action:Stop. Do not move the hand. Acknowledge the sensation. “I am feeling an urge to distract myself.”
Phase 2: The Peak. The urge will intensify. It will scream at you. “Check it! Look at the screen!” This is where the physical discomfort hits. Your chest might tighten. You might feel fidgety. Action: Breathe. Do not fight it. Just watch it. Say to yourself: “This is just chemistry. This is cortisol leaving the system.”
Phase 3: The Crash. If you wait—literally 90 seconds—the wave breaks. The chemistry metabolizes. The urge fades. And suddenly, you are just standing in an elevator, calm.
The Luxury of Gears
I am applying this to my dinner. When I feel the pull to take the next bite immediately, I put the fork down. I look at the food. I look at the people at the table, whether I am with family or friends, talk or sit silently. I feel the engine screaming and I wait.
I wait for the wave to pass. And then, I pick up the fork.
It is uncomfortable. It feels “wrong.” But that discomfort is the feeling of your brain re-wiring itself. The goal is not to be slow. I still want to be fast when the market is moving or when a crisis hits. The goal is to have Gears. And yes, sometimes you want slow, I for one want to be slow eating.
Changing your baseline will take time, so you stay with it and ride the wave every time it comes. I have been trying at the table for long and still have work to do.
True high performance is the ability to red-line when necessary, and to idle smoothly when it’s not. Don’t let the engine destroy the driver. Because if you keep it in high gear all the time, it will “break” over time.