Air Date: 7/12/21
The Upgrade by Lifehacker How to Never Miss a Deadline, With Journalist Christopher Cox
Jordan
Hey, and welcome to The Upgrade, the podcastfrom the team at Lifehacker,where we help you improve your life one week at atime. I'm Jordan Calhoun, editor inchief of Lifehacker.
Meghan
And I'm Meghan Walbert, Lifehacker's managingeditor.
Jordan
And Meghan, I can't get the hell away fromthese deadlines. They are just...Personal deadlines, professional deadlines.Everything has a due date.
Meghan
Jordan, I know, they're everywhere, especiallyin our job, it's like one after another after another. I don't know if you've noticed.
Jordan
Exactly. Yeah, no. I mean, I've noticed inmy professional life it is completely runby deadlines. I have now realized in my personal lifethey are also run by deadlines withchildren. You know that my nephews are staying withme for the summer and now I haveto feed them regularly. Even when you feed them onetime, they'll need it again in just afew hours. It's excessive.
Meghan
They come tapping on your shoulder.
Jordan
Exactly.
Meghan
The lunchtime deadline is here.
Jordan
Oh, man. And then deadlines for picking themup from camp, deadlines for tryingto get them to bed. My entire life, all of our livesare just organized by deadlines.
Meghan
You know who we need?
Jordan
Who do we need? Tell me. Talk to me.
Meghan
We need journalist Christopher Cox. That'swho we need.
Jordan
Yes, indeed.
Christopher Cox
Creativity and sticking to a deadlineare not at odds. In fact, like the sortof motivation of a deadline can create the space forcreativity. It can be motivating to thekind of brilliant literary thoughts that you can have,even if you're given all the time in theworld.
Jordan
Christopher is a former chief editor of Harper'smagazine and executive editor atGQ, where he worked on stories that won a Pulitzer,the PEN Literary Award for Journalism and Multiple National Magazine Awards.He's also written about politics,business and science for the New York Times Magazine,Wired, and Slate.
Meghan
Yes. And now Christopher has a new book outcalled The Deadline Effect: How toWork Like It's The Last Minute—Before the Last Minute,which details some pretty savvytricks for how to manage and meet your deadlines.1
Air Date: 7/12/21
Jordan
I got to say, that's a great title. I really like that title. Like How to...How to work likeit's the last minute before the last minute, becausethat's something that we can all relateto.
Meghan
Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, for me, it'sit's...Operating on a deadline is kindof easy when, you know, that deadline is coming up.But then how do you operate on adeadline when you have to set a deadline for yourself?Do you know what I mean? Like, Ifeel like work stuff, you know, I always know whenthings are due, when things are comingup. But how do I get more proactive about doing thoselittle personal tasks, you know, likegoing to the DMV and like filling out camp forms andstuff when there's no real deadline for it?
Jordan
Right. Right. At first, when I was thinkingabout it, I was thinking that I wouldprobably treat professional deadlines with more seriousnessthan I would personaldeadlines that are more...Like I can push those backa whole lot easier because I am theonly person who can impose a consequence on those.But then I realized, like, I split all of my deadlines, whether they're personal or professionalin my head, I think I implicitly splitthem between ones that are real deadlines and onesthat are fake. And in the beginning, Itell myself like, that they're all real and that thesedeadlines are all important. But I thinkbeneath the surface, you know, if it's the type ofmeeting, for example, that you need to beearly to or on time to versus those where you like,our podcast producer isn't really goingto make a big deal out of it if I'm two minutes late,so I'm going to finish doing the thing thatI'm doing. And that deadline is not a real one. Right,right.
Meghan
Right. We can cheat a little bit because Micaelais so kind and understanding.
Jordan
Exactly, exactly. So, like, that's I thinkI do that with everything personal andprofessional is that I whether I'm lying to myselfabout it or not, like in the back of my head,I am implicitly categorizing every deadline as thisis something that I need to do, or elsethere's going to be some type of consequence thatI'm not willing to accept, whether it's,you know, filing your taxes on time or you're goingto face a penalty or, you know, going tothe DMV or your tags are going to expire and you riskgetting pulled over or whatever.Right. So those are the real deadlines that I categorizein my head as something that willactually have a sincere consequence. And then theother ones are ones that I think don'thave the sincere consequence or it's a self-imposedconsequence or something that likeit's that it's not a real deadline. So I could pushthat off. And those are the things that Iprocrastinate so much on.
Meghan
Well, and that's where I think we could usesome improvement and maybeChristopher can help us with that.
Jordan
Let's find out. I hope so.
Jordan
Christopher, thank you for joining us. Welcometo The Upgrade, we're glad to haveyou.
Christopher Cox
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Jordan
All right. So I want to start off with somebroad context here, because your book,The Deadline Effect, is named after an actual phenomenonthat people probably aren'taware of unless they happen to be social scientists.Right. So can you explain somecontext here on what the deadline effect is?2
Air Date: 7/12/21
Christopher Cox
Yeah, sure. So it's a little bit ofa counterintuitive title, because if you aska social scientist, the desired effect is a bad thing.[00:05:24]It's basically the tendency,especially in negotiations, but really for anythingto wait to act to the very last minute. Sothe deadline effect is you have a long, drawn-outprocess or some sort of project or negotiation. You don't make any progress toward ituntil the clock is really ticking down tozero. So that tendency is the deadline effect andit tends to have negative outcomes for everyone involved. And in this book, I talk aboutthat a little bit. But then I also talk about,well, you know what? If we took all the power of thedeadline effect, you know, the sort of the ability of a deadline to force us to get thingsdone, but tweak the timing a little bit,moved it so that we could use that deadline power,but earlier and when we had more timeto get things right.[48.9s]
Meghan
So can you explain a little bit about how...Yousaid scientists kind of see this asas a negative thing, but you see it as a positive?So how can the deadline effect go wrongin the real world? And how do you see it as an opportunityfor it to go right?
Christopher Cox
Well, it goes wrong. Just, you know,anyone who's ever written a termpaper up until the last minute in an all-nighter knowsthe problems with waiting to the lastminute. You know that your work can be shoddier. It'srushed. You don't get to do the bestversion of what you want to do. So the thing thatI did in the book was I started to lookaround at places that had mastered deadlines and sawwhat—how they did that. And onething that they did very well across the board wasnot wait till the last minute. They theygot things done early and they got things done instages in a way that made their workmuch higher quality than it would be if everythingwas pushed to the very last minute. So Iinvestigated the tactics that they use to get there.
Jordan
That sounds like one of those things that'seasier said than done when it comes tonot the last minute, right? We always the last minuteI notice a difference in myself whenI'm given externally imposed deadlines. I do so muchbetter because I don't know if it's justa me thing like me not wanting to let other peopledown versus those things that I assign tomyself, I'm going to do, you know, I'm going to finishthis personal writing draft byThursday is going to be a completely different responsefrom me than if someone elsesaid, "I need you to have this by Thursday." My likelihoodof getting it done by that date is just so much higher when it's from someone else. Isthat is that normal? Am I normal,Christopher? Like, you know, is there anything thatyou found in your research that wouldseparate the likelihood of success of a goal if it'sexternally imposed versus internallyimposed?
Christopher Cox
Yeah, well, first, let me assure you,you're totally normal.
Jordan
I'm glad you led with that. I'm glad you ledwith that.
Christopher Cox
Yeah, I think that external deadlinesare more effective thanself-imposed ones. Although I'll just add really quicklythat the effect is not as dramatic asyou might think if you have a self-imposed deadlineand you take it seriously and maybethat's the crucial part of it. But you set a concretedeadline a day at time and you really fixthat in your mind. It does have a very real effecton your on your productivity, on your ability to get things done. So don't dismiss thoseout of hand. But it's also true that if youhave the ability to connect the deadline to some actualexternal enforcement, then youshould you should seize that opportunity, becausethe more nudges you have to get thingsdone by a deadline, the more likely you are to todo it. And so in the book, the way I sort of 3