Manufactured urgency leaves us feeling drained. But we can fix it...
For most of us, being online forms the backdrop of everyday life. It's there when you wake up, when you travel to campus, when you study, and often when you try to rest.
Messages, reminders, and updates constantly pop up, mixing academic tasks with social life and other commitments in a single stream. Over time, this constant connectivity begins to shape how you experience time and attention, often without you noticing it happening.
Within that environment, a particular feeling tends to develop. There’s a sense that everything needs to be dealt with quickly, and that delaying a response might mean missing something important or falling behind. This pressure builds through repetition, as small interruptions accumulate and urgency starts to feel normal.
Studies on attention and cognitive load consistently show that frequent interruptions make it harder to concentrate and harder to return to a task once you’ve been pulled away.
Even when a notification is ignored, the brief alert can still disrupt focus because part of your attention shifts toward the possibility of needing to respond. This pattern eventually increases mental fatigue and reduces the quality of thinking.
For students, this effect is amplified by the way digital tools are used in university. Emails from lecturers, learning platforms, group project chats, part-time work messages, and social media notifications all arrive through the same device. The brain doesn’t automatically distinguish between what is truly time-sensitive and what can wait. When everything arrives together, everything feels urgent.
There’s also evidence that constant digital alertness keeps the nervous system slightly activated. Research on stress and arousal suggests that being repeatedly pulled into a state of readiness makes it harder to fully relax, which affects sleep quality and emotional regulation. This explains why scrolling or checking messages often doesn’t feel genuinely restful, even when it looks like downtime.
Understanding this context matters because it shifts the issue away from willpower alone. The problem usually isn’t poor discipline or motivation alone, it’s the environment you’re operating in. Once you recognise how urgency is created online, you can make more deliberate choices about how you respond to it.
Here are some practical ways to manage the feeling that everything online needs your attention right now.
Learn to separate urgent from important
Urgency usually comes with clear consequences and time frames, such as deadlines that are explicitly stated or issues that affect others immediately. Importance often relates to long-term impact rather than speed. Research on decision-making shows that pausing even briefly before reacting improves judgement, which helps prevent everything from being treated as equally pressing.
Change how notifications reach you
Notifications are designed to interrupt, because attention is valuable to social media companies and app developers. Turning off non-essential alerts reduces the number of times your focus is broken. Many students find it helpful to check email and learning platforms at set times, which aligns with research showing that this approach improves concentration and reduces stress.
Resist the habit of instant replies
Responding immediately can feel efficient, but it trains others and yourself to expect constant availability. Studies on workplace communication suggest that delayed responses often lead to clearer, more thoughtful replies without harming relationships. Giving yourself time supports better communication rather than weaker engagement.
Create periods of time that are genuinely offline
Attention benefits from breaks from digital input. Research on cognitive recovery shows that uninterrupted time supports memory, learning, and emotional balance. Studying with your phone out of reach, eating without screens, or setting aside short periods where you are not reachable allows your mind to genuinely rest.
Be aware of group chat pressure
Group chats create urgency through volume rather than necessity. Messages stack quickly, and silence can feel uncomfortable even when no response is required. Understanding this dynamic helps you engage selectively, which aligns with findings that reduced social comparison and constant monitoring support better wellbeing.
Set expectations where you can
Clear communication reduces anxiety on both sides. Letting others know when you are likely to reply helps manage assumptions and lowers pressure. If you're "always on", people will expect you to be "always available."
Notice how urgency affects your thinking
Frequent interruption fragments attention and increases mental load. Tasks take longer, errors become more likely, and rest feels less restorative (and guilt sets in for taking any rest at all...).
Managing digital urgency doesn’t require you to reject technology or become unreachable. Being online is ingrained in our lives - what counts is how we use it, rather than allowing it to use us. The challenge is keeping our digital habits in proportion so that a constant sense of urgency doesn’t dictate how you think, study, or rest.
When you slow down responses, filter what truly needs attention, and choose when to engage, you protect your focus in ways that support learning, wellbeing, and your ability to think clearly without feeling overwhelmed.
