Why You Need A Sense Of Urgency

Leaders understand that urgency is essential to make change and progress. But why do you need a sense of urgency?

I would even go as far as to say that urgency is essential for success. You cannot be a successful business owner unless you understand how and when to create a sense of urgency. I’ve always been the type of person that if nothing is going on in my business or nothing is going on where it needs to be happening, I make things happen. However things don’t just typically happen by themselves or by watching others or by waiting for things to happen, so you need to have a sense of urgency.

What Is Urgency?

Urgency is a feeling that something has to be done right now that there is no time to wait.  There is no time like the present. It absolutely has to be done right away. It’s the idea that everything has to be done as quickly as possible and in my opinion without compromising quality because you don’t just want to do a bunch of things and then do them horribly. You want to still do a good job and do them well, but get things done as fast as possible. It is also having a sense that every day you come to work or every day you’re working on your business that you’re making a commitment to make something happen. I like to say it’s a race and you need to act as if everything has a very tight deadline. Urgency is also the opposite of complacency. In my opinion, people tend to be very complacent with certain things that come their way and also keep in mind that urgency and having a sense of urgency doesn’t really come naturally to most people.

Why You Need A Sense Of Urgency

Here are nine reasons why you need to have a sense of urgency.

1. Things are changing at a very fast rate. We all want things instantly, right? The world is moving at a faster pace, as the rate of change is going up. Technology is making things faster. I mean look at how often Facebook alone changes all the things that they’re doing, the algorithms, as Apple is always coming out with a new iPhone every time you look around.
2. It is painful to go slow. It is more painful, tougher, frustrating, and stressful to go slow – so why go slower? It’s like ripping off a Band-Aid – ripping it off faster is way better than ripping it off slower. If you wait for the last minute to do something, the amount of stress that you will have created by waiting to the last minute will definitely be more than the artificial stress that maybe you would’ve created in the beginning by having a sense of urgency.
3. Urgency creates momentum. This is a big one – momentum is the strength or force gained by motion or by a series of events. Do you want your business to be strong? Then you need to have a sense of urgency and create momentum. It’s like the law of motion – an object at rest stays at rest, an object in motion stays in motion. You want things to constantly be in motion. You don’t want things to slow down, so keep pushing.
4. Creating a sense of urgency helps to keep you focused. Focus stands for Follow One Course Until Successful, that’s what you want to do. That’s what focus means. When I created my own fashion line, I literally created the entire line and sold it within a period of four months, why? Because I was focused, I was not doing anything else, I was barely sleeping. I was lucky if I got a workout in and was able to eat properly for the day because I literally was so focused on finishing this line, but I got it done in four months and it was amazing and it sold out of its first retail store in two weeks. I sold over 100 units of one style in a month and I created a ton of momentum, so that’s what you want to do – you want to be a focus and by being focused and having a sense of urgency will help you to stay focused.
5. You won’t care what other people think or say. You won’t have time to care because you’re going to be so focused on what you’re doing. You’re only going to be able to have tunnel vision and see your goal and work towards it until you get there. When you have nothing going on, it’s really easy to start looking around at people and start comparing yourself to your competitors. You don’t want to go down that path, that’s like what I like to call the curse of comparison. You want to stay on the path of urgency and focus on a long-term vision.  
6. Having a sense of urgency brings about positive energy and excitement. You are going to feel great when you’ve got a lot of things going on in your business and you’re not going to have time for any complaining or anything like that. When nothing is happening in your business, it’s very easy to complain, look down, and have a negative attitude about things.  When something goes wrong, you are going to have the tendency to dwell on it a lot longer because you have nothing else over here that’s going. If you’ve got a lot of things going on and something goes wrong or something doesn’t work out, it’s not going to be that big of a deal to you because you have so many other things going that are good.
7. Having a sense of urgency brings about creativity. It’s going to help you to start to think outside the box, especially when it comes to problem solving. I always find that I have way more ideas when I have a lot of things going on because it just makes your brain work faster and think differently. It just helps you have so many more ideas and be so much more creative and be able to problem solve so that’s definitely going to help you.
8. Having a sense of urgency will save you time. It makes sense to go faster because you’ll save more time and you’re going to get more things accomplished.
9. You’re going to do things smarter. When you don’t have time to waste, you’ll start to be more efficient with the time that you do have. That’s really key because you want to be as efficient as possible so that you can get the most amount of things done as possible.  

How To Create & Maintain A Sense Of Urgency

So now that you know why you need to have a sense of urgency, let’s talk about the nine ways to create a sense of urgency and maintain it because maintaining it is definitely important.

1. You need to have self-motivation. It’s essential you are creating false deadlines in your mind. You’re going to need to have some rules and restrictions so that you can really start to become more disciplined Being busy and motivated is great, you get a lot of inspiration.
2. Set goals and deadlines. The more goals and deadlines you have, the easier it’s going to be to create that sense of urgency. If you have something that’s due in a certain amount of time, you always have that underlying notion in the back of your mind that this has a deadline and I have to get it done. I like to create artificial deadlines for things even if there is no deadline for something because they help me have a sense of urgency and maintain a sense of urgency.
3. Stay focused. The more you stay focused on your goals, deadlines, and what your vision is on the end product, the more you’re going to have a sense of urgency.
4. Take breaks. You want to avoid burnout. If you just keep going and going, it’s not realistic and eventually you need to rest.  So, understand yourself – understand how much sleep you need to get, how much rest you need, how many breaks you need within the day – and work around that. It’s fine if you need eight hours of sleep, just understand that and then make sure the other 16 hours that you have you are really maximizing your time properly and you’re not wasting it.
5. Have a strong why or sense of purpose. The more that you have a strong why, the more that you have a greater sense of purpose of why you’re doing what you’re doing. Why you are creating the fashion line that you’re creating. The more you’re going to be driven to have a sense of urgency and get it out there. Having a strong sense of why and having a sense of purpose will definitely help you to create a sense of urgency and maintain it.  
6. Having a sense of urgency is a skill. And it needs to be worked on just like any other type of skills. Just like a muscle needs to be worked on in order to grow it and get stronger, having a sense of urgency is the same thing. You might not get it right the first time, but keep working on it and keep working at it until you can become the best at having a sense of urgency.  
7. Don’t let your successes make you complacent. A lot of people will start to have small successes in their business as they are pushing for certain things to happen and and then relax a little bit – you don’t want to do. Your successes should push you to have an even bigger sense of urgency. It shouldn’t kill your sense of urgency, it should create more of a sense of urgency. You need to have the mindset to continuously do better each month. I mean look at Google – they could have easily relaxed and said we are the best at this, we are the best at that. However they keep coming out with new things, keep evolving, and keep changing and that’s what you want to do with your business.
8. You don’t want to treat all tasks equally. You want to become outcome focused, not task focused. A lot of people will be doing a lot of things all day long and think that because they accomplished a lot of things or crossed a lot of things off their list that they actually did a lot. But at the end of the day, you want those tasks to be outcome focused. You want them to have meaning. You want them to actually equate to sale so that you can become profitable. Thus there’s a difference between working in your business and working on your business, and both of those things need to be done as a business owner. However you have to understand when one is more important than the other.  According to John Carter who is the author of the book A Sense of Urgency – he says that urgency is not just have a meeting today, it’s to have a meeting that accomplishes something today. You need to prioritize and focus on what is actually yielding results, what’s actually getting you sales, and fight the temptation to try to do everything at the same time and treat all the challenges equally. Not every task on your to do list is going to be equal, so you want to set your tasks at the beginning of the day or the night before and then start to number them or prioritize them in order of importance. So if you don’t get to some of the smaller tasks that aren’t as important, it’s not as big of a deal as long as you work on the ones that are more important.  
9. You will need to bring the outside in. You need to start hiring people that can help you in the areas that you need help with.  A lot of startups have the mentality that we know best or I know what I’m doing, I don’t need any help. But then their sales are hurting and it’s usually because they’re not willing to get help. You want to have the mentality that asking for help is the right thing to do and it’s only going to help your business. Many people underestimate the importance of hiring and seeking expert advice and this is where we come in. If you are interested in working with us, don’t forget you can schedule a free 20-minute discovery call here!

That's the nine ways why you need to have a sense of urgency and nine tips on how to create and maintain a sense of urgency. For more FREE fashion biz tips, join our Fearless Fashionpreneur Facebook Page and subscribe below!

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