Do you have a sense of urgency?

False: firefighting is more to do with the illusion of living life to the full! This sense of urgency isn’t something that is limited to the world of business: it exists in all of us, consciously or not, in every aspect of our social lives. To deal with the culture of the “absolute present”, we live at a pace that matches our desires and think we’ve abolished time. We don’t judge situations on objective criteria, but according to internal issues that distort our assessment. Urgency then becomes a mental construct. Firefighting and acting in a flash may be a way of giving ourselves personal reassurance, of exercising power or even a crutch in the face of anxiety. We manage to derive “secondary benefits” that may result in a form of alienation that we’re not even necessarily aware of.

Firefighting is a vehicle for this intensity that enables us to be more efficient and achieve more. The attempt to master this urgency may be understood as conquering time, a way of triumphing over death. This urgency becomes the means by which it is possible to live life more intensely.

Think about it… some trifling expressions make a lot of sense, such as: "get your head above water" – even the most diehard devotees of breaststroke in a professional environment will recognize that there is no better way to breathe and keep moving forward. Or, another example: "taking a step back" is a useful way of finding your bearings so you can stay on track!

In plain English, taking a breather is an act of survival in the workplace: it’s an interlude of 20 or so seconds, an hour or even a whole day during which operational energy seems to be at a standstill. Do you think that suspending time is incompatible with a work environment where immediacy is an imperative? That’s a big mistake! Think about this simple equation: break + curiosity + modesty = professional efficiency and personal fulfillment.

False: choosing to react immediately means...

• jumping straight to a conclusion

• winning the battle, but at the risk of losing the war

• defending or justifying yourself or blaming someone else

• taking things personally

• compromising your position

• asking yourself: "How can they do this to me?"

• thinking: "I'm sure I'm right"



Choosing to take a break, on the other hand, means...

• taking a few seconds out of your schedule

• asking yourself whether the initial assumption was right or wrong

• asking yourself whether someone didn’t understand you properly

• trying to understand something you’ve missed

• judging the reality of the situation

• asking yourself whether you might have misinterpreted something

What should you do when you’re caught unawares by a situation that risks throwing you off balance or when you find yourself in a conflict? The answer is obvious: take back control. But how can you do that smartly and without provoking a crisis? Now is the time to explore the advantages of curiosity, a state of mind that paves the way to intelligent communication. Curiosity means we can put our need to be right to one side. Accepting that we make mistakes helps us see beyond the simple facts and teaches us to direct our thinking and actions differently. The pursuit of reactivity and efficiency very often results in us burying this curiosity for good, even though it is a gift from early childhood. In adulthood, this ability is forgotten as we prioritize other filters for looking at the world: intuition, experience, intelligence or anger.

False! In a conflict situation that is likely to degenerate into a crisis, the choice is yours: either you react pronto (in which case you’ll almost certainly end up in a crisis, because there’s nothing quite like that for reducing any chance of deciphering a situation, understanding what is being said by the other person and being understood yourself) or a curiosity break. How should you proceed and why?

• pay heed to the filters that reduce your attention span when communicating (excessive certainty, the desire to be done with things, incomprehension, etc.);

• give the other person the benefit of the doubt and try to work out what motivates their behavior;

• stop brooding and harboring any resentment that prevents you from objectively analyzing what is happening or what is being said;

• rephrase what has been said to show that your aim is to understand rather than a desire to prove you are right.

Practice these techniques especially during “disembodied” discussions – by email for instance – which are more stressful than direct interpersonal communication. This is for a purely physical reason: your reflex is to hold your breath when typing reactive emails, which has a significant impact on the central nervous system. “Email apnea” might partly explain the growing tide of online aggressiveness and misunderstandings.

True! So, say goodbye to autopilot mode for good! Instead of reacting at once, act only after you’ve had time to make a decision. Of course, you have to recognize the paradoxical nature of the proposition: “You will save time and discover new options if you take your foot off the accelerator for a moment”. Slowing down to go faster– now that’s a tricky position to adopt for anyone who is convinced that their reputation is at stake if they don't respond quickly enough!



However, the advantages of this suspended moment in time are numerous:

• It makes you (physically) smarter: a break is like the “relaxation response” defined 40 years ago by researcher Herbert Benson, which can be employed to regulate stress using a mechanism based on clearing your mind and letting go. This process, if you give it the chance, improves communication between the two hemispheres of the brain and optimizes the irrigation of areas dedicated to attention and decision-making!

• Take a look at the big picture: the idea isn't to silence your instinct but to challenge it to ensure it isn't short-circuited by the pressing need to meet the expectations of whoever is in front of you or simply to move onto something else. Taking a break means being present in mind, a deliberate act that will lead you to ask yourself the right questions: What's going on? What isn't going well? What can I do to steer the course of events in the direction that seems best to me?

You can't make the days longer, but you can manage your time – and especially your energy – better. To use your time wisely, you have to ask yourself some key questions: What do you agree not to do? What doesn't make you happy? What isn't important to you? What isn’t going right? Improving your efficiency and avoiding burnout means knowing how to recognize your limits. And how to say no. This may seem risky… but if what is urgently required of you is a waste of time (and could also have an adverse effect on the basic proposition), agreeing will only make matters worse. So, just say: “No, I'm not going to read this article” or: “No, I'm not replying to this email straightaway”… Whenever you’re faced by an emergency, ask yourself: Am I the right person for the job? Is this the right time? Do I have enough information to tackle the request? Wherever the answer is no, offer an alternative (someone else, a deadline, the right information).

The race against time has been the number-one reason for stress at work in overall terms, far ahead of apprehension about losing your job. With the health emergency and social crisis triggered by Covid, the fear of being laid off has now made its way back to pole position in the surveys. In spite of everything, day-to-day firefighting – even when working virtually – is still the main cause of angst: a majority of respondents think that their work is fragmented and that they’re constantly switching from one activity to another.

In total, more than one in two respondents felt they were not in control of their time. If, like Alice's rabbit, you live with the certainty of being permanently behind schedule, the time has probably come to familiarize yourself with the virtues of taking a breather!



* 2012 IPSOS survey carried out for the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.