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Ride the adrenaline
I think writers and photographers and all creative people do need a deadline to get anything done. It’s remarkable to me, including myself, if someone isn’t saying to me, I want this piece, I’m not going to write it. I’m just not, it’s too hard. Writing is too difficult. Doing any creative work takes such an intellectual sort of tussle that if there’s any way you can escape from it, you will. So deadlines, I think, are a critical point of extracting great work. And interestingly, some of the best work has been done under deadline.
For instance, the great photographer, Richard Avedon, he always liked to do both kinds of work, his deadline work, his journalism work, you know, his fashion magazine work and then his artistic shows. His best art was actually the stuff he did for magazines. I mean, it was better than anything he did on the slow burn of his shows. There was something about the adrenaline, there was something about the discipline of knowing that you had an audience as opposed to simply being a museum show, whatever. That actually brought out the best work in his artistry, I think. And I think that’s often true that sometimes the best work is done under the gun. Somebody writing at warp speed. I think that, interestingly, the journalism that was done right after 9-11 was some of the best journalism that we’ve seen in the last 25 years. It was like writers and photographers and editors so energized by the need to get this content done. There wasn’t any wasting of time or sort of frothing it all up, whatever. They did their best work. They were really inspired to do their best work and that was done under the gun with a need to get it done. There’s nothing like the urgency of subject matter content and passion, you know, to get your best work.
Manage expectations
I would hope that the deadline is going to be missed for a good reason. And of course, sometimes it’s a personal reason. You know, my kid fell down the stairs and I couldn’t do it. If it was a younger person who just can’t make that deadline, I think it’s important that they come to you ahead of time and say, now I had this deadline for next Monday, but I don’t think I’m going to make it for these three reasons, which is that the person I was trying to interview just postponed to whenever, this person’s work was late, this person did whatever. And the thing I’m trying to assemble has been slow coming together. I wanted to give you a heads up that I’m hoping to get there, but it may need another week. And then if it does, I get it, and I’ve not been left high and dry.
I think giving people the information there that they need to make a different pivot is terribly useful to a manager. What you don’t want to do is to be thinking you’re going to a meeting, someone’s been giving you all this stuff that was going to make you good in the meeting, and it’s not going to happen. That’s very upsetting. So I guess the bottom line is if you’re going to miss the deadline, manage expectations and give your manager a heads up, it’s going to happen before it actually is upon you.