How to use this sheet
- Read each statement and tick one box: how often is it true of you on a normal week? The meaning of each number is printed above its column.
- One tick per line. Answer for how you are, not for how you would like to be.
- Add up the numbers you ticked, all sixteen lines. On the web page and in Acrobat the total is made for you.
- Read what your total means, then answer the questions at the bottom.
The PDF is fillable: open it in a real reader (Acrobat, Preview) to type and save, or print it and write by hand. Anything you type on this page stays in your browser, nothing is sent anywhere.
How often is this true of me?0never1rarely2sometimes3often4always
- I do my best work under pressure.
- I blame outside demands for never having quiet time to think.
- The slowness of people and things around me frustrates me.
- I feel guilty when I take time off.
- I seem to be always rushing from one place to the next.
- I push people away so I can finish something.
- I get anxious when I am out of reach of work for even a short while.
- While doing one thing, my head is on another.
- I am at my best in a crisis.
- A new crisis gives me more of a lift than steady progress on long-term work.
- I give up time with people who matter to me to deal with a crisis.
- I assume people will understand when I let them down because something urgent came up.
- Solving a crisis is what makes my day feel worthwhile.
- I eat while I work.
- I keep telling myself that one day I will get to what I really want to do.
- A long list of ticked boxes is what makes a day feel productive.
Your count
Add up the sixteen numbers you ticked. On this page the count is made for you.
What your total means
- 0 to 25: Urgency is a tool. You use pressure when it helps and put it down when it does not. Keep an eye on the statements you scored 3 or 4: they show where it could take over.
- 26 to 45: An urgency mindset. Urgency decides more of your days than you think. The important work that is never due today, thinking, planning, relationships, health, is probably what gets squeezed.
- 46 and above: Closer to an addiction. The rush has become a source of energy and of worth: being needed, being busy, feeling useful. Like any habit that pays, it is hard to drop, and it tends to make worse the very tiredness it seems to fix.
Whatever the total, the single statement that stings most says more than the number. Urgency pays: it brings a feeling of usefulness, quick results and a reason not to face the slower, harder things. Seeing what it pays you is the first step to needing less of it.