WEEK 34: Not Everything Urgent Is Important
- Glen Jensen
- Sep 2
- 4 min read
What if the bravest thing you did this week was slow down?
Full sun. Light rain. Right on time.
What If Mastery Was Just Knowing When to Ease Off?
Energy modulation is a master skill the quiet art of knowing when to surge, when to soften, and when to stop altogether.
You’ve Been Treating Every Day Like It’s Harvest Season
You’re not broken. You’re overexposed.
Somewhere along the way, you started treating every day like it had to be full sun. No shift in season. No shade. Just output, pressure, and caffeine.
But urgency still lingers; disguised as discipline, whispering that you can’t afford to slow down.
You’re not tired because you’re weak. You’re tired because you’ve forgotten how to read the weather.
Urgency Isn’t the Forecast. It’s the Static
You don’t manage time. You manage climate.
Your nervous system isn’t a machine. It’s a field.
Now comes the next layer: can you hold the forecast?
Because most of what surrounds you is lying.
Commercials, headlines, notifications
they all scream urgency. As if not acting now means everything collapses.
But most of it isn’t your storm.
And most of it isn’t important.
Urgency is often a false weather report.
It feels loud. It feels real. But it rarely deserves your energy.
Mastery means knowing what matters
and what merely panics.
Try This: The Volume Knob Protocol
A daily rhythm
check for your nervous system:
Morning Forecast: What’s the weather inside? Sunny? Cloudy? Pressure rising?
Set the Dial: Choose your mode: - Full Sun (Create)
- Light Rain (Restore)
- Gentle Wind (Maintain)
Midday Modulation: Adjust if needed.
Don’t force a harvest when the field needs rest.
In Week 18, we said: Your fatigue is a message, not a moral.
The same goes for urgency.
Before you act, ask: Is this truly important… or just loud?
If your fuel has been caffeine and pressure, that’s not failure, it’s feedback. This isn’t indulgence. It’s catharsis.
Refusing to live in permanent alert mode isn’t quitting.
It’s a humane act.
Yes, the world still wants your attention.
But you decide what gets your field.
You Are the Farmer. Your Nervous System Is the Field
The nervous system is a farm.
Some days you plant.
Some days you patch the gate.
Some days you walk the field in silence, just to know it better.
In Week 27, we remembered that done feeds the roots.
But so does letting the sun rise and fall without interference.
Real growers know: you don’t chase the weather.
You work with it.
A Line Worth Repeating:
Full sun. Light rain. Right on time.
Want to Go Deeper? Try These
Book: Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less
-Alex Pang
→ Reframes rest as a strategic rhythm, not a luxury.
Podcast: On Being
-Krista Tippett with Bessel van der Kolk
→ A trauma-informed conversation about the body’s memory and healing.
Essay: The Disease of Being Busy
-Omid Safi
→ A poetic reflection on what we lose when we forget to ask: “How is your heart?”
This Week’s Compass in a Few Lines
“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens.”
-Ecclesiastes 3:1
“Your body is not a machine.
It’s a garden. Tend it like one.”
-Real Wild Ginseng
This Isn’t Withdrawal. It’s Recalibration.
You don’t need to perform.
You need to move at the right pace, for the right reasons.
If your old rhythm was sprinting until collapse, this week might feel like withdrawal.
But it’s not failure. It’s recalibration.
There was a time when even rest made me sick.
The moment I slowed down, my body collapsed
as if it had been waiting for permission to recover.
I couldn’t take a massage without feeling like I’d been in a fight.
Maybe you’ve felt that too:
The crash that comes not from laziness, but from finally stopping the performance.
Even now, I can feel the urge to speed up
to catch up to things that don’t actually matter.
It takes daily practice to stay with what’s real.
To let my work, my body, my writing unfold at the pace of what’s important, not what’s urgent.
I wish I’d learned it sooner.
But now, it lives in my rhythm.
It’s not theory.
It’s how I stay in the game.
It’s sustainable.
It’s humane.
Challenge:
Pick one day this week to ignore the “urgents” and focus only on what truly matters.
Even one hour of right-sized action can reset your system, and remind you who’s in charge.
Protect the Pace You’ve Just Remembered
The Field Guide gives you the map.
Coaching gives you the terrain training.
If this week helped you reclaim your rhythm
protect it.
That pace belongs to you now.
Next week:
Bravery enters the room
quiet, steady, and unshaken.
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