Deadlines. Lately it seems I’m always working towards tight deadlines. They’ve never really been my forte. I think the issue is that I’m often terrible at gauging how long things will take and usually estimate low. This leaves me stressed and scrambling at the last minute. Maybe I just secretly enjoy the stress.Because I’m a bit of a perfectionist and detail oriented, I’m not really capable of just producing something without feeling it’s been done well; I think I need a sense of pride and satisfaction. I have been known to sacrifice sleep if necessary in the stress of last minute completion. For me, there really is nothing like a fast approaching deadline for motivation.
With school, I have continual deadlines to produce, and I find I’m developing new skills. You can teach an old dog new tricks: there is hope. The last time I went to college I focused in the arts. Yes, there were deadlines, but mainly for creating and producing art, which is very different than trying to cram as much technical information in your brain as you can, (hoping it’s not spilling out over the sides) and hoping it congeals into some cohesion. Time management and working proactively is definitely the key.
Why is it, though, that you can usually meet a deadline that someone has set for you, but when it comes to our own personal pursuits, we are much more relaxed in how we get there? Perhaps there’s no outer sense of failure or disappointment when it comes to our own personal deadlines. We don’t feel the same pressures to meet them. We’re not accountable to anyone but ourselves. We can always start that diet next Monday; put the gym off for another week; talk about how we really should make time for creative pursuits one of these days. Really, though, what pursuits are the most important in our lives? Shouldn’t they be our own goals and pursuits? Shouldn’t these really be the deadlines that mean the most, which we’re working the hardest to achieve?
