Urgency

In plain terms

You are given too little time to think. It is not a scheduling accident: the deadline is chosen so that you decide before you have been able to check.

Definition

Urgency is the deliberate shortening of the time between receiving a request and making a decision, in order to prevent any independent check.

Why it works

Deciding fast and deciding well are two different modes, and we cannot be in both at once. Under time pressure, attention goes to what has to be done rather than to whether the request is legitimate — a shift we don't notice, because we feel we are thinking normally. Urgency doesn't even need to be believable: it only has to be there for checking to come after acting instead of before.

What resists it

Make slowness automatic rather than voluntary: a rule decided in advance — no payment, no code, no login in the ten minutes after a request — holds where good intentions give way. A legitimate request always survives ten minutes; that is even the best practical definition of a legitimate request.

The question to ask yourself

“What actually happens if I wait an hour before doing this?”

The 45 attacks that exploit it

Other levers · Last updated: 2026-09-02.