The Importance of Being !!!URGENT

Have you ever noticed that most of the emails or tasks you receive bear the mark of urgency to some degree? Whether explicitly said or not, the majority of emails sent are urgent to some extent to either the sender, or the recipient, or an unknown, yet indirectly involved third party.

The following paragraphs are deconstructed summaries of five most common typical urgent email scenarios, based on my personal experience as a language school owner, with the focus on translation enquiries.

 

Typical Time for Sending/Receiving !!!URGENT Requests

• Any day, especially Fridays, between 4 and 5 pm
• Any day, especially weekends, around or after 10 pm
• Any holiday / vacation day

 

Typical !!!URGENT Request Supporting Actions

• Calls first, announces the upcoming email containing the actual documents.
• Sends the document, calls the very second the message sent appears on the screen.
• Sends the document, waits up to five minutes, calls just in case.

 

Typical !!!URGENT Requests

• The One-With-The-Urgency Request

What is !!!URGENT	I need these documents translated asap, please put it as your top priority. I cannot stress enough how important this is.
What actually happens	Sends the documents on Monday at 10 or 11 pm, receives them translated on Tuesday by the end of the working hours, comments: Oh, wow, you’re really fast, thank you. You needn’t have hurried that much. Friday would have been great, too.

 

• The Organization-Is-For-Amateurs Request

What is !!!URGENT	Please, please, please, translate this asap, the X expires in 2 days, we need to submit the documents to Y.
What actually happens	X is valid 90 days. Was signed 88 days ago. Has been laying on the desk under a pile of papers for well over 60 days. The Sender receives the translation the next day and is forever thankful until the next time.

 

• The So-Polite-It’s-Hard-To-Resist Request

What is !!!URGENT	We have this super important X and are in the middle of Y, and it would be super helpful to us if we could get this done by Insert-Any-Reasonable-Deadline. (…) However, since this is highly important, we would really appreciate it if you could speed things up and deliver this Insert-Any-Wording-Suggesting-Yesterday.
What actually happens	Receives the documents asap. Responds in X days. After 1-5 reminders.

 

• The Only-This Request

What is !!!URGENT	We are doing X, and we only need this little document here to be translated by Insert-Any-Reasonable-Deadline.
What actually happens	Sends at least one more Only-This request per day before the deadline, each containing the same size of the initial document in the best case scenario. Comments: Well, I guess we’ll have to extend the deadline if you can’t make it within the timeframe we’ve agreed upon.

 

• The Revise-Everything Request

What is !!!URGENT	We are doing X, and we only need this little document here to be translated by Insert-Any-Reasonable-Deadline.
What actually happens	Sends at least 5-10 revisions of the same document after receiving the translation. A) Does not use the track changes option. Or alternatively: B) The revisions are made by a number of different people who disagree on the final version of the text.

 

This had actually been going on for years until one day I realized I was turning into that !!!URGENT person, and almost all my enquiries to my associates started with “I have this !!!URGENT situation/document/request/enquiry/whatever”. And I was the one causing stress and putting pressure on other people.

Even worse, while contemplating how and when exactly I have turned into that !!!URGENT pusher, I realized that I have been attending to everyone’s !!!URGENT needs, except my own. And I couldn’t even remember the last time I felt that something was !!!URGENT for me, intrinsically, in the sense of my own need for personal or professional development, or my own personal or professional requirements.

And I came to the realization that this is not the person who I am nor the person who I want to be.

Now, since it’s Friday, and almost 5 pm, I’m gonna call it a day for today, and let my hair down. So maybe instead of hitting send on that !!!URGENT email you’re about to send, perhaps you can take a second or two to reconsider how !!!URGENT that email is with reference to both who you are and who you want to be. Or, to quote Coldplay’s Clocks:

Am I part of the cure?
Or am I part of the disease?