Momentum And Urgency Are Not The Same Thing

One feeds your creativity, the other depletes your mental health

I lost my mom when I was 10 years old. On the day I lost her,I both grew up and never grew up. What I mean is that I grew up because suddenly my childhood felt synonymous with learning about grief, legal guardianships, and feeling like I had to take care of myself. I never grew up because developmentally I wasn’t afforded an environment that allowed me to progress through life cycles with room to make mistakes, explore, or learn that momentum and urgency weren’t the same thing.

I’ve seen the effects of this manifest in the way I was moving through my career and life. I believed that life was short that I wouldn’t have room to wait and publish something next week, I had to do it as soon as I thought about it. It made my outlook on my career shortsighted, even though I had really big dreams.

For me, this was a trauma response. Maybe you read that and you think, “wow, me too.”

Whether you grew up with an unexpectedly tumultuous childhood or an adulthood experience that became a “before” and “after,” I think we all have seasons where we use momentum and urgency interchangeably. Hustle culture has made it very easy to do so.