On Deadlines and Readiness

I once read that Lorne Michaels has said, “Saturday Night Live doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30 pm on a Saturday night.”

When I initially encountered this quote, I was teaching university-level classes, and I immediately related it to my teaching career. I could prepare for a class endlessly—I loved preparing for classes. I truly love planning out learning experiences, creating resources, selecting readings, planning discussion prompts and activities—all of that is right up my alley and I could do it forever!

Additionally, owing to a fair amount of social/performance anxiety, I tended to overprepare as a way of assuaging my anxiety about being “on” in front of a group. I found that, if I was excited about the material, or enthusiastic about trying out something new, that tended to supersede my anxiety, or at least give me something else to think about!

So, when I was teaching, there was a way in which I almost never felt completely ready—there was always something more I could do—a new activity I could add to class, or something I else I could review before class, just in case it came up.

But: teaching has built-in deadlines!

Class happens at a set time, every week, and that time comes and goes… and is quickly followed up by the next class meeting, which you also need to be ready for!

By contrast, your writing life is most likely not set up with this magical thing called deadlines. Or, maybe you do have a deadline, but it’s frightening large (like, turn in entire dissertation or book draft by X date) and/or there are scary consequences attached to not meeting it.

One of the things I am currently learning for myself is just how helpful it is to create my own deadlines and to do as much as I can to make them feel real, so they’re not just something I can push back in my head and let drag on and on.

Here are some ideas for making self-imposed deadlines feel real:

1. Write them down, in ink, on a real calendar. This seems obvious, but if you don’t write a deadline down, it only exists in a very squishy mental place, which can be so easily pushed back or even forgotten about entirely. If you use an electronic calendar, it’s so easy to slide the deadline over to a new day. I recommend printing out a paper calendar (Google “free calendar pdf”), taping it over your desk or in your bedroom—anywhere where you’ll see it regularly, and writing the deadline in ink. If you do end up having to move it, you’ll feel the pain of having to cross it out and write in a new deadline.

2. Make them real! Tell someone else about the deadline. Ideally, this would be your advisor, whom you could tell to expect a piece of the work by a certain date, but you could also use a peer or members of a writing group to help you stay accountable.

3. Make them really real! I know faculty who apply to conferences for the sole purpose of getting their writing done by a specific date. Provided your presentation or conference paper is on the topic of what you’re writing about, needing to deliver something to a live audience on a certain date can really light a fire under you.

Returning to the Lorne Michaels quote above for a moment, there is also an element in it about giving up on perfectionism. With our writing, we can spend ages poking around, changing little things here and there, but not really moving forward. At a certain point, we need to “ship the work” as Seth Godin says. We need to get it out there, share it with the world, and we also need to free ourselves up to move on to the next project.

So, whatever your current project is, consider giving yourself a deadline, even if the world hasn’t provided you with one!

Sometimes, the work is done—and ready to be shared—because it’s Saturday night.

Image by Will Heath/NBC courtesy of hollywoodreporter.com