Every second counts.
Every second counts. You’ve heard it. You’ve lived it. From the drive-through timer to the words-per-minute test to the four-brokers-at-once operating system, you learned that fast equals valuable. That urgency equals serious. That the woman who moves quickest is the most committed. But what if the speed that built your career is now consuming the very things you say you’re building toward?
3 Key Takeaways from this Episode:
Urgency is not ambition. It’s ambition’s most convincing counterfeit. I’ll walk you through my own journey from McDonald’s drive-through timers to three-minute email response times in my agency, and how speed stopped being a competitive advantage and became a compulsion I couldn’t turn off, even after the conditions that required it had changed.
Your brain is wired to choose urgent over important, and it’s costing you. I’ll share the Mere Urgency Effect research from Johns Hopkins and the University of Chicago (Zhu, Yang, & Hsee, 2018) showing people consistently choose urgent tasks over important ones across five experiments, even when the important task has a higher payoff.
How to reclaim your pace using the Five A’s. I’ll teach you the Awareness-Alignment-Action framework for this episode: see that urgency is your default, not your reality (Awareness), close the gap between your calendar and your actual values (Alignment), and make one decision this week on your timeline instead of urgency’s timeline (Action).
Join Us at the Level Up Summit
The women I work with aren’t running on emergency anymore. They’re learning to operate from strategy instead of survival, building businesses where speed is a choice, not a default.
If that sounds like the shift you need, the Level Up Summit is where it’s happening. 24 experts. 2 days. 14 sessions. This is the strategic partnership that helps you build with precision instead of panic.
Get Your Seat at Level Up Summit
Free Elevation Assessment
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Research & Resources
Zhu, M., Yang, Y., & Hsee, C.K. (2018). “The Mere Urgency Effect.” Journal of Consumer Research, 45(3), 673-690. Johns Hopkins Carey Business School, University of Florida, and University of Chicago Booth School of Business. DOI: 10.1093/jcr/ucy008
Girotti, M., Bulin, S.E., & Carreno, F.R. (2024). “Effects of Chronic Stress on Cognitive Function: From Neurobiology to Intervention.” Neurobiology of Stress, 33, 100670. Department of Pharmacology and Center for Biomedical Neuroscience, UT Health San Antonio. DOI: 10.1016/j.ynstr.2024.100670
Duque, A. et al. (2024). Systematic review on sustained stress, cortisol, and decision-making, cited in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
Book
Odell, Jenny. Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock. Random House, 2023. New York Times bestseller.
Referenced in This Episode
The Bear / FX/Hulu. Created by Christopher Storer.
Mellody Hobson / Co-CEO, Ariel Investments; Chair, Starbucks.
Share
Know a woman who needs to hear this? Text them this episode. The one who responds to every email in under five minutes and calls it dedication. The one whose calendar is full of proof she’s valuable but empty of the things she says actually matter. The one who hasn’t taken a breath between tasks in so long she’s forgotten what stillness feels like. She needs this. When one woman chooses her pace, she gives every woman watching permission to choose theirs.
Next Episode
You’ve slowed the clock. You stopped treating every hour like a fire. And now that the noise is quiet, now that you’re not running, you can hear something you’ve been drowning out for a very long time.
And what it’s telling you? You’re not going to want to hear it. But you need to.
Episode 14 drops next Tuesday.
Let’s Connect
What’s on your manufactured urgency list? What happens when you give it 24 hours instead of 3 minutes? Drop me a DM:
Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission if you purchase through them, at no additional cost to you. I only recommend resources I’ve actually used or genuinely believe will support your growth.
