Pause for a moment and reflect on your last working week. How many tasks were marked as 'urgent' or 'high priority'? How many messages arrived with red flags, bold 'ASAP' tags, or subject lines in full caps demanding immediate attention? If you are like most professionals, the honest answer is 'too many' to count. Somewhere along the way, the modern workplace has developed a peculiar addiction to treating everything as an emergency, fostering a belief that the fastest response is always the best one.
The trouble is that living in a permanent state of emergency does not make us more effective. Recently, Gaurang Das, a monk, an IIT Bombay graduate, and a leadership-and-mindfulness coach, shed light on this issue through his LinkedIn post. He explained how the cult of false urgency has taken over offices, blurring the line between what is truly urgent and what is merely important.
How Workplaces Have Become a Cult of False Urgency
In his post, Gaurang Das wrote about how words like 'urgent,' 'high priority,' and 'ASAP' have quietly become the default language of work. The real problem, he noted, is that many workplaces have forgotten the difference between what is urgent and what is actually important. When everything is treated as a crisis, nothing truly is. He put things into perspective, stating, 'Not every message is a crisis. Not every deadline is a disaster. And not every quick decision is a good decision.'
A Lesson from the Bhagavad Gita
To illustrate his point, Das drew an example from the Bhagavad Gita. He wrote, 'Even on the battlefield of Kurukshetra, Krishna did not ask Arjuna to act impulsively. He first asked him to pause, understand, and see the situation clearly.' Even in the most high-pressure moment imaginable, the guidance was not to react faster but to steady the mind and think first. This ancient wisdom is highly relevant to today's fast-paced work environment.
Why a Calm Mind Makes Better Decisions
Das's core message is encapsulated in one line from his post: 'A calm mind solves problems. But a rushed mind creates new ones.' Decisions made in panic rarely produce good or expected results; instead, they often create new problems that demand even more urgent fixing later. A calmer mind, in contrast, can measure options, discern what genuinely matters, and more often than not arrive at a better solution. Slowing down, paradoxically, can turn out to be the faster route to success.
