Deadline Driven or Deadline Doomed?

I have always been the type of person who’s done really well with a deadline. English essay due in a month? Got it. Need to finish an article by a certain date? I’m on it. But throughout all of my 20s, if you asked me to read a book just for fun, or watch a movie without any distractions, just for leisure,  I always had a hard time with it. There was always a deadline and a due date that made everything seem so much more urgent for me.

Too Tired to be Inspired has been kind of like a deadline for me. I’ve imposed them on myself, and I still don’t even stick to them half the time, but I find that they really hold me accountable. Yeah, I don’t send that newsletter at the same time every single week, but eventually, it gets done. Right? Does that count for something? Are deadlines something that I actually need?

I started reading a book for my upcoming book club. It’s called The Tenant. It’s a good read so far, and I am enjoying it, but I find myself constantly looking at the page number at the bottom, watching it go up and up and up. I need to finish the book by the end of the month so that I have all my thoughts and ideas ready for what I actually want to present to the book club. But I honestly wonder: am I doing this because it’s just for fun, or am I setting a deadline because I know it needs to get done?

What I’m learning is that my creative process needs urgency. I need to do this by a certain day, and I need to do that by a certain day, or else I really don’t get any of it finished. It just falls off the wagon. I’m working on letting things be unnecessary, on just saying, “Oh well, it’ll get done later,” but I’m having a hard time distinguishing between things I genuinely love to do and things I’m pushing myself to do out of urgency.

I don’t know where this comes from. Probably from my years spent as a crazy, Type-A student who had to do everything perfectly and submit everything on time. But I honestly just don’t know any other way. I don’t know what it’s like to just do things and not feel like they need to be done for a reason.

This is something I’m learning about my creative process. Maybe I can use this deadline curse to my advantage. What if I set small milestones to get a creative piece of work finished? That might really help me sit down and force me to be creative in those moments. Maybe my urgency is a good thing. Something that’s actually helping me lean into my creative side a little bit more.

Or maybe I’ll say “fuck you” to the deadlines and let all my grand ideas slip away.

Maybe.