Victims of Furgency (and How to Escape)

One of the things I knew going into business full time, but maybe didn't pay much attention to before diving in, is that it can be somewhat lonely. So I've made it a point to have regular meetings with colleagues in similar work. At the beginning of this summer, my colleague Becca Silver and I started a CEO Power Hour, meeting every day from eight to eight thirty, Monday through Thursday, to talk about what we wanted to accomplish and hold each other to it.

Here's what we're both guilty of in those meetings: we list out so many things we want to accomplish that it's almost impossible to actually accomplish them. And we're guilty of something else too. We get an idea, sometimes a spur of the moment one, and suddenly we're ruminating on it and thinking, oh my gosh, this has to happen right now. There is immediate urgency with it.

One of the times this happened, I paused, stepped back, and told Becca what I'd noticed about myself: that I come up with an idea and think it has to happen right now, that I have to expedite it. What rolled off her tongue next was the word furgency. I laughed and said, furgency? And she said, yeah, fake urgency. That's exactly what it is. There's nothing urgent about it except that I've decided on my own that it's urgent and needs to happen right now.

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What Furgency Actually Is

If you look up furgency in the dictionary, you won't find it. Type it into Google and you'll mostly get emergency rooms for pets. But there's more formal language for what Becca and I are describing. I found an article on Harvard Business Review by Karen Walker, and I'll link it in the show notes. She refers to what we jokingly call furgency as ambient urgency. Here's what she says about it.

"Ambient urgency is the chronic low grade sense that everything is urgent. It has to keep moving and nothing can wait. Unlike episodic urgency, which is short-lived and eventually resolves with a solution, ambient urgency does not let up. It is a permanent, invisible state running in the background. What makes ambient urgency particularly challenging is that it is self-replicating. Leaders get caught inside a system that creates constant pressure, perpetuated by unintentionally producing the same conditions for their teams to operate in."

"3 Questions to Pressure Test Your Priorities," Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2026/07/3-questions-to-pressure-test-your-priorities"

So we can think of it as ambient urgency, living in the background and self-replicating. Or we can call it fake urgency, because most of the time what Becca and I experience in our CEO Power Hour isn't ambient urgency. It's just this irrational fake urgency that we're calling fergency.

Where Furgency Comes From

If you take a step back and look at this from an eagle's eye view, you'll notice that every time we're experiencing furgency, we're masking something else. It's a compensation mechanism. We're fighting for a sense of control because we lack it in some other area.

In my brain coach certification program, compensation is defined this way.

"A strategy whereby one covers up, either consciously or unconsciously, weaknesses, frustrations, desires, feelings of inadequacy or incompetence in one area of life through gratification of excellence in another area of life."

"Gregory Caremans"

It originates from the limbic lobe, your emotional and survival command center. When you're in a state of social threat, like feeling judged, excluded, or at risk of disapproval, that's where it's coming from. If we don't get ahead of it, it leads to overwhelm, decision fatigue, and eventually burnout.

In a book interview I had recently, the woman I was talking with put it this way about her own relationship with busyness.

"I grew up in a place where it was safe to just be busy with work. No one could bother you, yell at you, or get angry with you if you were busy working."

It's also safe to be busy at work because then we don't have to pause and think about what's really going on. What's the deeper issue we're not addressing right now? So ask yourself these questions to figure out why you might be experiencing fergency as a compensation mechanism.

• Are you compensating with urgency because you feel inadequate in an underlying area?
• Are you compensating with urgency because you're avoiding a more challenging conflict or problem?
• Are you compensating with urgency because you're afraid people might find you out, that you're not an expert or not as qualified as they think?

Three Situations Where Furgency Shows Up

The healthy alternative depends entirely on the situation. Here are three different places where I see people, myself included, experiencing fake urgency.

1. The Fire Extinguisher Leader

My husband and I have both worked for leaders like this, at the same time even, and we'd share stories. One day he said it's like they set things on fire just so they can put them out. They're notorious for saying, oh, I'm just putting out fires all day long. Everything for these leaders tends to be urgent, and they place their focus and energy on things that might not impact the greater good.

So let's ask why. It could be feelings of inadequacy. They might be afraid to address deeper, more cultural problems because they don't want to come across as less than, or their limiting belief is that they're the only one who can solve things and stay in control. I know I've been there myself, especially when I felt inadequate at something. I decided, well, if I'm inadequate in this, I can put out all these other fires and seem really adequate outwardly.

2. The High Performing Ideator

This one is very real for me right now, writing this book. I get an idea and think it needs to happen right now, needs to be expedited. So I create unrealistic timelines and unnecessary pressure for myself, especially if I've already told someone about the idea. Then I'm imagining, oh my gosh, they're thinking about this and I need to follow through. But the reality is, they're not thinking about it, not nearly as much as I am. This isn't top of mind for anyone but me.

I'll get real with you. I think for me, I could be masking some other chaotic feelings I have in other areas of my business and life right now. If I can expedite this book timeline, it means I don't have to pay as much attention to those areas, which are often tedious, detailed work I don't enjoy. If I focus on the book and say I have to publish it by this time, it gives me an excuse not to focus on those other things.

3. The Overzealous Person

This one wants something done in an unrealistic timeframe or to an unrealistic level. Here's an example straight from my home life. If I have guests coming over, I might suddenly want to overhaul the back porch in one day. Today is Thursday, guests are coming Saturday, and I'll tell my husband tonight, hey, can we rip up the back deck and replace it? I think we can get it done in one day. I'm not thinking about everything it would actually take to prepare for that project. I just want it done before our guests arrive.

Or take this other example I'm notorious for. The night before a day of school when I had an event coming up, I'd think of an outfit idea, and even though I might already have some of the pieces, I'd get so hyper focused on getting the rest within hours that I'd go to sleep thinking, if I get up at five a.m., I can go to Walmart or wherever's open and maybe find a scarf or a certain pair of shoes in this color. That's fake urgency.

Furgency Is a Choice

Furgency, or fake urgency, or ambient urgency if you want to call it that, is a choice in my opinion. And what gets rehearsed gets repeated. If you rehearse this pattern of urgency, it's going to get repeated, and that leads to burnout, overwhelm, decision fatigue, and the cycle starting all over again.

So I want to challenge you to ask yourself these things. Is this really urgent? What do I know about the situation, my environment, my past experiences? Then decide what might be driving these behaviors and what limiting beliefs are present that are causing you to fall into fergency, and choose a healthier alternative.

We're going to compensate no matter what. That's just how our brains are wired. But we can compensate in healthy ways.

The next time you feel that rush of urgency, what might you actually be masking?