Gaurang Das: How ‘high priority’, ‘ASAP,’ and ‘urgent’ have become workplace diseases: Mindfulness coach and IITian Gaurang Das shares why ‘fake urgency’ is destroying corporate culture

The modern workplace suffers from a “cult of false urgency,” where everything is labeled “urgent” or “ASAP,” blurring the lines between what’s truly important and what’s not. This constant state of perceived crisis hinders effectiveness, as decisions made in haste often create more problems.

Pause for a second and think back over your last working week. How many things were labelled “urgent” or ‘priority’? How many messages landed with a red flag, a bold “ASAP,” or an email subject line in full caps demanding your attention right now?If you’re like most people, the honest answer is- ‘too many’ to count. Somewhere along the way, the modern workplace has developed a peculiar addiction, a nagging that everything is on fire, all the time, and that the fastest response is always the best one.The trouble is that living in a permanent state of emergency doesn’t make us more effective.Recently, Gaurang Das, a monk and an IIT Bombay graduate, and a leadership-and-mindfulness coach, shed light on this through his LinkedIn post.

IITian and Midfulness coach Gaurang Das (Photo: gaurangadas.com)

How work at offices has become a cult of false urgency at work

Gauranga Das wrote in his post, how “urgent,” “high priority” and “ASAP” have quietly become the default language of work. The real problem, he said, is that many workplaces have forgotten the difference between what’s urgent and what’s actually important. When everything is treated as a crisis, nothing truly is. He put things into perspective, writing, “Not every message is a crisis. Not every deadline is a disaster. And not every quick decision is a good decision.”

He relates it to a message from the Bhagavad Gita

To make his point, Das explained the same, taking 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.Read post here.

Why does a calm mind make better decisions

Das’s core message is conveyed through one line in his post. “A calm mind solves problems. But a rushed mind creates new ones.”Decisions made in a panic do not always produce good or expected results, creating new problems that demand even more urgent fixing later.A calmer mind, on the contrary, can measure the options, pick and choose what genuinely matters, and more often than not arrive at the better solution. Slowing down, paradoxically, can turn out to be the faster route.