Not Having Deadlines Is A Luxury I Cannot Afford

I’ve already worked 57 hours this week, and I still have Friday to go!

The voice echoes throughout the open office. The person sounds proud, speaking just a little louder to make sure more people hear. A laugh follows. No one questions it. Someone responds:

Haha, you gotta do what you gotta do!

The first person responds.

Yeah, with that deadline coming up and all, we all really have to put in that extra effort!

Deadline.

Just hearing the word makes many shudder, even flee.

But why would you?

If you’re not setting deadlines on a small red clock, what are you even doing?

I work in a field rife with stressed out nerds and business people, fighting each day to stay above water, to hold meetings, follow up on estimates, circle back and ensure alignment.

But stress doesn’t just happen. You have to cook it up. If you ask your favorite food-blogger to write you a recipe, I'm sure that, after you scroll past their oh so interesting life story and the number of ads that rivals the number of grains of sand on the nearest beach, you’ll find a certain potent cocktail of just the right ingredients in very specific amounts.

It might look something like:

• 2 cups of under-estimated tasks

• 3 tablespoons of unrealistic scheduling

• 1 3/4 cups low-balled budgeting

• 1 destructive deadline

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Insert short clip of the blogger tasting the abomination, making a TikTok/YouTube face (you know the one):

UHMM IT’S SO GOOD, YOU GUYS! I WISH YOU COULD TASTE IT!

The camera clicks off, the smile disappears. The dish goes in the trash.

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And that’s just the thing with stress—it’s not based on any individual ingredient. You don’t just wake up one day, get handed a task and say:

That’s it—I’m stressed now.

You are boiled alive.

You ARE the frog.

Are deadlines bad?

The answer is yes—if they’re used as destructive tools on a misaligned team. A sure-fire way to achieve burnout, churn and ensure a horrendous vibe. If they’re forced on you, and you regularly experience this, get out.

The answer is no—if they’re used responsibly to ensure you’re moving forward at a timely pace, and exist to create constraints under which you can flourish with a sense of time, a direction and a goal.

The core functionality of a deadline is to keep you moving. To keep you producing not what is perfect, but what is good. It’s as Parkinson’s law states:

Work expands so as to fit the time available for its completion.

The unfortunate reality, though, is most of us are not able to avoid them. We’re not born into wealth. But even then, I hesitate to say that avoiding deadlines is a good idea.

We’re born into bills. We’re born into needing to eat. We’re born into constant evolution.

The only thing we can do is to get comfortable with deadlines, and harness them for our own gain.