An Ode to Exigentialism: A Philosophy of Urgency

I often think about a rainy Saturday afternoon some years ago. My partner and I were lounging around in a Nolita apartment I’d rented from Airbnb to bridge a gap between leases- a classic lazy Saturday. At 3pm, the buzzer rang. A jolt of panic set in: we’d completely forgotten that we’d scheduled a showing with a real estate agent.

I asked for a few minutes. Then, without a word, we launched into motion. Dishes into the dishwasher. Bed made in a flash. Towels from the floor to the rack. Sundries collected and shelved/drawered. By 3:04, the prospective lessees were touring what appeared to be a spotless apartment (it was fortunate they didn’t open certain drawers).

Three aspects of the experience have stuck with me, years later:

1. We were radically efficient — what might normally take 30 minutes was done in 3.

2. Despite the stress, there was a distinct thrill in operating with such constraint-driven celerity.

3. We felt better afterward than we had before: our relaxation undergirded by a sense of efficacy and a tidier space to enjoy.

   
   

Overall, it was a huge win, and I’ve come to realize that this pattern of compressed effort yielding outsized returns appears everywhere. Projects, dating, decisions, chores- all expand like gas to fill the time they’re given (Parkinson's Law). Our brains, evolved to conserve energy but operating in a no longer energy-constrained world, rarely choose speed intuitively. Our institutions are all too happy to oblige, with whole organizations dedicated to killing the sense of urgency that so often generates human excellence, fulfillment, and thriving.

A larger-scale example came when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Observers believed that Russia effectively had Europe over a barrel due to its role as a strategic provider of natural gas. The conventional wisdom was that the additional LNG import terminals required to keep Europe’s factories running through the winter of '23 would take years to build. Instead, Germany’s first new import terminal was up and running less than ten months later, and the heat stayed on. Think tanks hailed it as a “miracle,” but it was not- it was a product of an exigency.

In a world where so much needs to get done at so many levels, from civilizational (housing supply, climate change mitigation) to personal (cleaning up messy bedrooms!), it’s natural to wonder why things can’t be like that all the time- why the feats of cooperation and execution we manage in wartime can’t be replicated in peacetime.

A sociologist might wax on about human nature and the need for a sense of external threat or time pressure to generate such behavior, but that would be a useless truth if true at all. I see no reason why not rage against it and work to build pockets both personal and cultural where exigency is less an exception than a guiding tenet. Because I’m so narratively driven (ChatGPT, which knows me well, helpfully suggested that I call myself obsessive here as well- thanks friend!), I looked for a word to capture this idea. None existed, so I invented one out of necessity: exigentialism.

Exigentialism is the belief that a life well-lived is one in which urgency is cultivated intentionally. It holds that many things can happen faster, more decisively, and more meaningfully if we bias toward action.

A less pleonastic version already exists as an ethos of many high-performing institutions: “get shit done.” Just as Stoics seek to inoculate themselves against hedonism, exigents seek to immunize themselves against procrastinism and its attendant siren songs:

Procrastinism clings to perfectionism; exigentialism embraces calculated risk.

Procrastinism worships proceduralism, exigentialism pragmatism.

Procrastinism lets things happen, exigentialism makes them happen.

Procrastinism asks: “Why not later?”; exigentialism asks: “Why not now?”

Procrastinism associates exigency with stress; exigentialism sees it as the path to a higher, more satisfied calm.

It would be easy to interpret this as another manifestation of grind culture or hustle porn- that would be a misread. This isn’t about encouraging folks to run marathons or feel consistent latent anxiety, it’s about encouraging them to jump in the cold bath of assuming that things can always happen faster than is normal and rejecting the forces of convention or human nature pulling in the other direction.

Many conscientious people work incredibly hard, yet without a deadline they struggle to catalyze the refinement of their work into output. Exigentialism also applies as readily to decisions as to work itself. I’m sure you can think of a situation where, lacking a forcing function, someone avoided making a difficult decision, wasting untold time and effort until some external factor finally forced their hand. That is the antithesis of exigential urgency.

Exigentialism is a rebellion against indecisiveness. It’s a call to remember that action is clarifying. That readiness can be summoned. That a better version of your day might be just five minutes away.