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Something Has to Give
In my last article, I discussed the relationship between procrastination and perfectionism, and why some of us might tend to wait until the very last minute to get things done. (It isn’t always problematic, either - if you haven’t read that piece, you can do so now - this one will make more sense with that fresh in your mind.)
I concluded by sharing some questions that I ask myself when I find that I might be procrastinating, including the all important, “What do I think is going to change between now and completing the project?”
The truth is, sometimes the only thing I think is going to change between now and completion of the project is that the deadline is going to loom larger. The pressure will increase to the point that something has to give, and that something is usually my unwillingness to just get it done.
Now, if you think I’m going to tell you that I’ve learned to change my approach, you’re wrong. This is not a story of how I learned to get things done ahead of time. It’s a story of how I learned to embrace how I naturally work, which is right up against a deadline.
Tortoise or Hare?1
For many years, I studied or worked alongside the kind of people who plodded along faithfully and completed projects ahead of the due date. They were consistent workers: 2 hours a day reading, 1000 words a day writing, slow and steady, until the project was in the folder and submitted, without large doses of panicked procrastination. I would think: look at them! They’re so self-disciplined! I’m all over the map. I’m no good. I should be more like them.
I thought my process was bad.
But when it came to outcome, the truth was that mine was roughly on par with theirs. In other words, in my observation, the slow-and-steady approach didn’t yield consistently significant differences in outcome from the frenzied-stop-and-start-until-the-last-minute approach. The tortoise and the hare seemed to cross the finish line with the same results.
The difference was in the amount of anxiety along the way.
When I started dating my (now) husband, he would sometimes observe me wallowing in anxiety as the deadline crept closer and closer. “I really should be working,” I would say, “but I’m just going to read a novel / watch another episode / do the laundry / re-organize my drawers…” And then the whole time I was doing the other thing, I would say, “I know I should be working, but…”
He would then look at me and say with slight exasperation, “if you’re going to work, work. If you’re going to rest, rest. But don’t ruin both at once.”
Ouch. But also: fair. I was neither working well nor resting well. I was just making an anxious little mess of both.
So I decided to change my approach. Not my process, mind you, but my approach. I would still allow myself to make a mad dash for the finish line at the last minute, but in the meantime, I simply wouldn’t allow myself to stress about it. I had lived with myself long enough and had gathered enough ‘data’ on myself to know that (a) I always got it done and (b) I always got it done fairly well. So why not just try trusting the process?
Guess what? It worked! (Most of the time, anyway - more on that in a minute.)
My process hasn’t changed. I still wait until the deadline to get things done. But in the meanwhile, if I rest, I actually rest, instead of beating myself up about not doing work. In other words, I embrace the start-and-stop nature of my process, but without anxiety. I know that my process actually does involve reading a novel / watching another episode / doing the laundry / re-organizing my drawers.
This is both a form of incubation, and an acknowledgement that some people are motivated by the idea of having a project done ahead of time, and some people are motivated by the pressure of a deadline. I’m the latter. So long as my approach isn’t leading me to be uncharitable towards someone else, I’m very happy to just own the fact that deadlines exist for a reason. In fact, I’m glad deadlines exist, otherwise my projects would just spin on out forever.
What About When There Is No Deadline?
Now, there are some thankless tasks in life - we’ll put them in the category of “life admin” - which don’t have a deadline: things like deleting old photos, backing up digital devices, or cleaning out the filter in the dishwasher. No one is going to chase you down to get them done, and no one is going to fine you or take you to prison if you don’t do them.
The ‘deadline’ only arrives when these things stop working. You run out of space for more photos, your computer crashes and you lose everything on it, the dishwasher fails to clean your dishes.
So here’s the question I ask myself: would I rather do the maintenance tasks ahead of time, or deal with the problem when the ‘deadline’ arrives?
For me, the answer depends. Personally, I’d rather not devote mental space to taking care of machines. I’ll take something like dirty glassware as an indication that my dishwasher needs attention, but I don’t want to think about it until then. Losing documents on a computer is a different question. In that case, this approach doesn’t help much. (Though, I have done it and can testify that it’s not the end of the world to lose everything on your laptop.) Someone else might have very different answers, but since we’re not really in moral territory, that’s fine!
This is an area of life where it’s important to know yourself. You probably have natural tendencies in one direction or another, and you get to choose when and how to work with them, and when and how to work against them. You are the steward of your God-given life.
Now, tell me: are you someone who thrives with the pressure of a deadline, or someone who tries to avoid that deadline? Or perhaps it depends on the type of project you’re working on? Do you have any tips or tricks to share?
And if you might like some help with self-knowledge, discernment, and decision-making in your own life, that’s what I’m here for.
(I’m going to be raising my 1:1 rates in 2026, so if you’ve been thinking about working together, now is a good time to get in touch. You can email: info [at] claritylifeconsulting.com.)
I know in some versions of the fable, the Hare is a really boastful and stupid jerk. I’m not advocating for that!
I've tried embracing the process, and for a very long time it worked well enough.
But I am less and less able to get rid of the anxiety. When you cross the line into clinical anxiety disorder, it all becomes a big mass of disfunction and the coping mechanisms start to fall apart.
And when there aren't firm deadlines, but big important things that still need to be done, I am bad at creating deadlines for myself because I know they are self-imposed. Then I tend to blow past the time they probably, almost certainly, should have been done by and then the shame and guilt mount up and I become even more paralyzed.
And then also my anxiety starts to create false deadlines or figmentary senses of obligation for things that really are unimportant and are just things I want to do: like planned substack posts.
I long for the days when the deadline was a helpful tool in managing the process instead of an enemy.
Love this. I’m such a procrastinator…but really all my best work is done in the mad dash, often between midnight and 3am, when the nearness of the deadline demands focus and the trivial gets swept away. I repeatedly saw in my own work at GCSE, A Level and even University that my essays and written work actually suffered when I plodded through it methodically and ahead of time. I like having the time to (often subconsciously) think through things, and then having the pressure of the deadline helps me to achieve clarity of thought.