Creativity And Dead-Lines

One of the surest ways for looking like a madman is claiming you work best under pressure while consistently missing every deadline you set for yourself.

I don't know but it seems to me that the techniques for procrastination are becoming more sophisticated, or rather our excuses for them are becoming more convincing.

I think this is partly thanks to the internet giving us endless rabbit holes that feel vaguely productive. Out of nowhere, you're an expert on 15th-century bookbinding when you should be writing.

Priorities can be grouped in terms of their energy cost and compounding value, which makes more tangible sense than the conventional urgent/important matrix that ignores the fact that creativity doesn't run on corporate logic.

Despite not having much love for conventions, I know I'd be better off just setting artificial deadlines for myself, even if they feel arbitrary, because structure paradoxically creates space for creative chaos.

Time compresses when you're deeply engaged and in a flow state and stretches when you're dreading a task or stuck in a rut.

A peculiar observation that I always tend to notice when time stretches for me is how quickly the mind fills the void with self-doubt, replaying past failures, inventing insurmountable obstacles, etc.

Anything but doing the work that needs to be done.

Peculiar because the extra time should be a gift of clarity and not a mental cage that works on amplifying the dread.

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Two Birds, One Stone

Deadlines serve this dual purpose of artificial constraint and psychological catalyst.

Provided they're not just imaginary lines and a lot is at stake, they can force clarity, focus and sometimes spark a frantic burst of creativity that wouldn't emerge otherwise.

It's very tempting to adopt this attitude of waiting until the very last possible moment and just doing all the necessary work in one full sweep.

It did work for me, many times, during my time immersed in the traditional school system.

The feeling of pulling an all-nighter and somehow producing something coherent from pure desperation is quite intoxicating, not unlike a gambling addiction.

In the unreally real world however, you're more or less constantly battling between your past self who made promises and your present self who has to deliver on them.

And here the stakes carry much weight, in terms of reputation, income, relationships, etc.

Who really wants to experience the slow erosion of trust in your own word?

The economics of this habit are brutal when you actually calculate them.

You're paying interest on procrastination in the form of rushed work and every delayed decision compounds like debt.

I used to think the adrenaline rush of last-minute work was a true engine of creativity.

I suspect now that it might have been something else entirely, looking back at it from the sober perspective of sustainable output from a longer time frame.

This last-minute work just before a deadline trains you to need crisis to function.


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