Stress & Capacity

How to tell what’s actually urgent from what’s just loud

By Annessa Leigh, RN

This post contains affiliate links. I earn from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you.

By about ten in the morning, most of us have already been asked for something by at least six people. A text from your sister, a work email marked high priority, a kid who needs a form signed today, a group chat deciding brunch plans in real time, and a notification from your bank that may or may not be a scam. Every one of them shows up at the same volume, as if all of them need you right this second.

That’s the part that wears us out. It isn’t always how much there is. It’s that everything arrives sounding equally important, so we end up answering whatever is loudest and wondering at the end of the day why we feel scattered and behind.

What nursing taught me about noise

In nursing, there’s a word for sorting this out: triage. When a lot of people need help at once, you don’t help them in the order they arrived or the order they yell. You figure out who actually needs you first.

One of the first things you learn is that the loudest patient is not always the sickest one. The person calling out every five minutes might need reassurance and a warm blanket, while the quiet one in the corner is the one you need to check on right now. Loud gets your attention. Urgent is what actually needs it.

Most of us never learned to triage our own lives. We treat every ping, request, and worry like an emergency, then feel guilty that we can’t keep up.

Moses and the father-in-law who was right

There’s a story in the book of Exodus about a man who had this exact problem. Moses was the leader God chose to bring the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. He was a reluctant leader, too. When God first called him, he tried to talk his way out of it more than once. But he said yes, and by the time this story happens, he was responsible for a huge crowd of people living in the desert.

Every day, people lined up to bring Moses their disagreements, and he sat there from morning until evening listening to every single one. Then his father-in-law, Jethro, came to visit. Jethro was a priest from a neighboring region, and he watched one full day of this before he said something. (Anyone who’s ever gotten unsolicited advice from an in-law can picture this moment.) The difference is that Jethro was right:

“’This is not good!’ Moses’ father-in-law exclaimed. ‘You’re going to wear yourself out—and the people, too. This job is too heavy a burden for you to handle all by yourself.’”

— Exodus 18:17–18, NLT

Jethro helped him set up a system. Capable people would handle the everyday disagreements, and only the hardest cases would come to Moses. Moses wasn’t being lazy by doing this. He was finally putting his energy where it mattered most, and everyone was better for it.

Jesus walked away from a crowd

If anyone had a reason to answer every request, it was Jesus. People followed Him everywhere, hoping to be healed or to hear Him teach. And yet there’s a moment in the book of Mark that surprises a lot of people.

Mark, who wrote that book, is a great guy to know. He was a young man in the early church who went with Paul on his first big missionary trip and then quit partway through and went home. Paul was so annoyed that he refused to take Mark the next time. But Mark kept showing up, grew into a trusted leader, and eventually wrote down the story of Jesus’ life, mostly from what Peter told him. It’s a nice reminder that quitting something once doesn’t decide the rest of your story.

Here’s what Mark tells us about one busy morning:

“Before daybreak the next morning, Jesus got up and went out to an isolated place to pray. Later Simon and the others went out to find him. When they found him, they said, ‘Everyone is looking for you.’ But Jesus replied, ‘We must go on to other towns as well, and I will preach to them, too. That is why I came.’”

— Mark 1:35–38, NLT

The Simon in that story is Simon Peter, a fisherman who became one of Jesus’ closest friends. Peter was the kind of guy who said whatever he was thinking the second he thought it, so you can almost hear the panic in “Everyone is looking for you!”

Jesus didn’t panic with him. He had spent that morning with His Father, so He knew what He was actually there to do, and He let that guide Him instead of the crowd. The crowd was loud. His purpose was what mattered.

A few questions to help you sort it out

You don’t need a complicated system. When something lands on you and feels urgent, try asking:

• Will this still matter in a week? A lot of things that feel like emergencies at 9 a.m. are forgotten by Friday.
• Is this actually mine? Some things belong to someone else, and you’ve just been the person who always handles it.
• Is it urgent, or is someone else anxious? Sometimes the pressure is coming from another person’s worry, not from the situation itself.
• What would happen if I answered this in an hour instead of right now? Usually, nothing at all.

These questions don’t make you uncaring. They let you show up fully for the things that really need you, instead of handing out little pieces of yourself to everything that makes noise.

Start your sorting where Jesus did

Part of why everything feels loud is that God doesn’t ping us like our phones do. He’s quiet and unseen, so it’s easy to give our attention to whatever is buzzing in our hands instead. But notice that Jesus’ clarity came after He got quiet with His Father. He didn’t figure out His priorities in the middle of the noise. He figured them out first, and then the noise had less power over Him.

You don’t need to get up before daybreak to do that. Even a few honest minutes at the start of your day, asking God what actually matters today, can change how loud everything else sounds. A pen you actually like helps too, because writing it down feels less like homework.

Annessa