The modem man has experienced a radical change in the way he perceives time due to newly-emerging life-controlling economic parameters. The dictatorship of new units of time - speed, urgency, "instantism", and tight deadlines - was established in the mid-1980s together with economic and financial globalization, which was made possible by the IT revolution. The common denominator of these notions is speed, which lies in the core of capitalism: the faster the turnover of capital, the greater the profit. The culture of urgency, which has become a mental paradigm and a framework of activity, is characterized first by hypervalorization of activity as the antidote to existential uncertainty and, second, by compression of time, reflected in the imperative to achieve as much as possible with as little time (or resources, etc.) as possible. The urgency which invades the professional and private spheres of life represents a distorted perception of time corroding the human character and interpersonal relationships and causing serious individual disorders and social disturbances.