In a feedback conversation, a colleague told me I have a "sense of urgency." He meant it as a compliment. I took it as one.
Lately, I've started to see the other side of it.
My eight hours at work fly by. When I close my laptop, my head feels heavy. I'm mentally exhausted and need a few hours to recover.
The strange part? We rarely have hard deadlines.
Take the AI coding tool we're introducing. We're behind where we want to be, and colleagues are waiting for it. That's real. But nobody set a deadline. The feeling that it should have been done yesterday? That comes from me.
And it's not just this project. Everything on my to-do list feels important. Everything feels like priority zero. And at the end of the day, my head pays the price.
I haven't started the change yet. But recognizing the pattern is already a first step. It reminds me to pause and question my own expectations.
A sense of urgency can be a strength. It helps us move things forward and turn ideas into results. But when everything feels urgent, we lose the ability to distinguish what truly matters from what simply feels pressing.
I'm learning that leadership also means knowing when NOT to push harder. A sense of urgency needs an off switch, too.
What do you do to help you find the balance of this urgency?
This is part of my "100 Days of Year One" series. Follow along as I share what I've learned in my first year as Head of Data and Cloud.