Whoa there Reader, lets slow it down a little...
There is something about the person behind you in a checkout line that can turn putting your wallet away into an Olympic event.
You know the situation. Your transaction is finished. You are getting your card back into the little slot it came out of, which apparently has gotten smaller since you removed it. The person behind you moves forward just a little. There is a sigh. Maybe a cart gets pushed closer to your legs.
Suddenly, you are stuffing the receipt somewhere it will never be found again and trying to collect six things with two hands.
Apparently, we are late.
For what? No idea. Nobody has told us. But the person behind us seems concerned, so now we are competing in the regional finals of Getting Out of the Way.
I find this interesting because there is a difference between being considerate and feeling like you have to evacuate the grocery store. Somewhere in those few seconds, another person’s impatience can become our problem.
…and it got me thinking.
How much of the urgency we feel throughout the day actually belongs to us?
I am not talking about the real stuff. If there is water pouring through your ceiling, we probably do not need a thoughtful conversation about whose pressure this is. Get a bucket. Call somebody. Move the good furniture.
I am talking about the hurry that shows up without anything changing about our own situation.
We are working through something at a reasonable pace. Then a message arrives. A person asks for an update. Someone walks into the room already frustrated, talking quickly, and looking at the clock.
Now we are rushing too.
The work is the same. The deadline may be the same. But the feeling around it has changed, and that feeling starts making decisions for us.
I think email is especially good at this. Someone sends a message, then follows up before we have had a reasonable chance to answer. We see both messages and suddenly feel behind. We might stop something important to handle something that could have waited, simply because the follow-up made it feel uncomfortable to leave it alone.
I know I can get pulled into that. There is a part of me that wants to respond quickly because I want to be helpful. There is also a part that wants the little feeling of pressure to go away. Those can look exactly the same from the outside.
But they are different reasons for changing what I am doing.
That is what makes borrowed urgency tricky. It often arrives through people we care about, responsibilities we take seriously, and a desire to do a good job. We are not sitting there thinking, “I would love to let someone else rearrange my entire afternoon.” We are trying to be responsive.
Then we look up and wonder where the afternoon went.
I see a version of this in performance environments too. An athlete makes a mistake, and the reaction around them gets bigger than the mistake itself. Voices get louder. Instructions come faster. Someone looks like the entire season is now hanging by a thread.
The athlete still has a next play to make. But now they are trying to make it while carrying everybody else’s reaction to the last one.
They hurry through a routine. They force a decision. They start trying to fix things that were working fine a few minutes ago.
And then we ask why they look so rushed.
That is a question I think we have to be willing to turn back toward ourselves. What pace am I bringing into the room? What am I asking people to carry just because I am having a difficult moment?
I would love to tell you that, as a coach, I am always the steady person in that situation. That would make a nice paragraph. It would also require you to never speak to anyone who has seen me coach.
I care. I get frustrated. I want things corrected. Sometimes I want them corrected about four seconds before the mistake happened.
But caring about the outcome does not make every reaction useful. If my impatience causes someone to rush through the very thing that needs their attention, I have added another problem to the one we were trying to solve.
The same thing can happen at home, at work, or in a conversation that started out perfectly fine until one person brought a whole difficult day into it.
We can understand why someone is anxious without assuming their anxiety tells us how quickly we need to act. Sometimes they really do need help right now. Sometimes they need to know when we can help. Sometimes they are simply having a hard time waiting.
Those situations deserve different responses, even if they arrive in the same tone of voice.
The question I keep coming back to is pretty simple: What actually changed?
Did the deadline move? Did something happen that needs immediate attention? Is someone depending on an answer before they can take their next step?
Or did somebody sigh, and I decided we were all in trouble?
That question leaves room to care about the person and still think clearly about the situation. It also leaves room to notice when I am the one doing the sighing.
Because I am sure I have been somebody else’s impatient person in the checkout line. Probably while buying something deeply time-sensitive, like pretzels.
So I am picturing that little moment at the register again. The card still needs to go into the wallet. The bags still need to be picked up. Rushing enough to drop my keys will only give everyone a new activity to watch.
Maybe the person behind me has somewhere important to be. I hope they get there.
I can make room for them, put my wallet away, and finish what I am doing.
Their cart does not need to leave with my groceries.
And I probably do not need to leave with their hurry.
Thanks for riding along!
~Dan
P.S. This newsletter is originally going out on October 13, 2026; which just happens to be my fathers 80th birthday. Thank you for all the love, wisdom and time you have given me over the years, you will always be my hero.
