On Deadlines

Too much bluffing will make you show it,

Too much pressure will make you blow it.

-Guy Clark

By: Austin Smith

I love Blogging, and writing in general, and doing things. I’ve never turned and said to a person ” Man, you know what I hate. Doing stuff!”. But I’m also terrible at getting stuff done. I have so much to do and never end up doing it all. Like yesterday, I had three goals, and I got them all done… in the two hours before midnight.

That’s what I’m going to talk about, deadlines. People just do better with deadlines. And the ability to force yourself to meet a deadline is an awesome skill. Like right now, I’m forcing myself to get something done on friday before eight. Friday was my choice, eight was my friends’ choice. It’s not like I have to get anything done, but I want to. I could just not go out and do stuff, but then I would have no friends.* I could also just forget about it all together, but then I would let myself down.

Deadlines help us get things done, they give us a feeling of necessity. I have not seen one person do worse with a deadline then without. Sometimes I haven’t seen them do better, but that’s because they suck. And it doesn’t need to be a fast and hard deadline either. Some people work better under pressure and prefer that, but others crack. The deadline doesn’t have to be the end, though. I could stop now and still have “met” my deadline. It isn’t necessary to put all the pressure on, just some, just enough to make you get it done. Telling someone that they have to finish something or someone’s going to die doesn’t help, and I can guarantee you that if you told one of the novelist crowd to write a book in a week or the world would end they couldn’t do it.

A lot of people will say that you need time to create the masterpieces that your ideas were meant to be, and if you can write ” War and Peace” fine by me, but from my experience the best ideas come when you need an idea. Sometimes they are forced and bad, but sometimes you can overwork something to death, too. The deadline never has to be the end of something, just ask George Lucas. Everything you do will get the time you owe it.

 

* Not that I have any anyway.