It's Due Date, Jim

Deadlines, the time limit of a project before it’s declared overdue (hence dead), the very thing that scares writers in finishing their articles, workers trying to escape overtimes, and college students trying to finish their report paper; A word that actually had a more literal meaning during the 1864 Civil War as stated by a certain famous article site with a taste of humor.

But we’re not going to talk about the definition of deadlines, nor the effect they do to stressed minds, weak-hearted people, movie producers, and game companies.

Not everything can be forgiven with a DLC

Actually, there are only two kinds of things that will happen to people being faced with deadlines. The first kind of reaction would be to plan ahead and try to finish the things they need to do bit by bit, and hopefully everything would be done before the date of the deadline even comes around.

The second reaction however, would be to procrastinate as much as possible until the very end, when those people would finally step back into reality and says, “Yup, guess it’s time to do it, it’s now or never”. Some of you would probably judge those kinds of people as ‘lazy’ or ‘untrustworthy’. Now, I know that it is true in many cases, but let’s look at the phenomenon in a different light.

You see, there are people who would freak out by the thought that the deadline of that work they’re doing is looming very close by like that annoying next door neighbor you never want to come visit you, and got so stressed out that their brain just freezes, halting any means of productivity and not even an act of true love can ever thaw it.

And then they would rage-quit while singing

However, there are people who would actually gain some kind of superpowers when the deadline comes knocking at their door. Every single ideas in their head comes pouring out, inspirations suddenly can come from anything, their time taking a dump in the bathroom becomes a method of meditation that makes their brain as superior as Sherlock Holmes in his best case of Asperger’s syndrome.

I am the latter kind, which is why I can relate when someone claims that “they can only work under pressure”. We need our targets, we need our due dates – we need our deadlines. That’s why I’m trying to spend as much as I can from my savings because I want that strong outside push to earn even more than what I spent.

Money well spent, though

But does it mean that we can work on constant pressure over and over? Nope, there is a high probability that our mind would collapse (unless you’re a workaholic). And, as a matter of fact, I actually don’t like this condition, what I really want is to be able to do things step by step whenever I have that spare time instead of cramming everything at the end, but I just can’t do it.

Now, the problem is that some people would think that their category is the other way around. People who can only do things in slow pace tend to procrastinate, which usually results in work overdue. And people who can unleash their full potential during deadlines try real hard to do it slowly at the beginning, which usually results in wasted energy and they’d still do it near the deadlines anyway.

So before you tackle that work with a time-limit period, make sure you do that one thing first: Know yourself