Prioritization Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I should also mention, the video is not being recorded at all. So, however you want to roll, so there’s that. Hayden, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Hayden Finch
I‘m so thrilled to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so thrilled to be chatting with you. You’ve got the coolest name for your organization – The Finch Center for High Functioning Anxiety.

Hayden Finch
Doesn’t that sound official?

Pete Mockaitis
It really does. I think we have a lot of high-functioning anxiety in the listenership, myself included.

Hayden Finch
Yeah. Well, that’s how I sort of got in this space, was like, “That’s me.” I’m pretty high-functioning and have a lot of anxiety, and noticed that my clients were kind of being attracted to me because they were pretty similar to me in terms of being pretty high-achieving people, doctors, and attorneys, and scientists, and also having anxiety, and trying to work all that out.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, yeah, that’s powerful, it’s important. And kudos on zeroing in on your message and your uniqueness and your brand relatively early in the course of rocking and rolling in your practice. That’s really cool.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, I studied marketing for a minute after I realized that that’s an essential part of the process, and that really helped me kind of figure out how to actually reach the people that I thought would be a good fit for me and that I would be a good fit for. So, yeah, that’s really helped kind of get that branding right.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some of the insights that you’ve shared in your book The Psychology of Procrastination. But maybe before we do that, could you share, is there anything particularly striking, surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive you’ve discovered about us high-achieving folk having gotten a unique vantage point of looking at the personal deep stuff that we’re all dealing with?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, one thing that’s interesting about especially high-functioning people is, obviously, procrastination hasn’t been so problematic that it’s kept them from being able to achieve great things. Like, these people that I work with are highly successful, and so procrastination hasn’t kept them from being successful like it can for some people.

And so, I see this kind of brand of procrastination in this population that’s really closely aligned with perfectionism. And so, they want to do things perfectly and that can kind of contribute to procrastination, and then the procrastination kind of influences how well they can do something, and there’s this relationship between procrastination and perfectionism that I think is particularly unique to this high-functioning population.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s really resonating in terms of one thing I’ve really procrastinated on is just processing my mail, like paper mail, because if it’s really good, I usually grab it already, like, “Ooh, this is a cheque,” “Ooh, this is a card.” And then what’s left is a big pile of, “I don’t know what’s in that envelope. Probably not anything interesting.”

Hayden Finch
Yeah, that’s really common to struggle with, like those basic activities of daily living, but then to not struggle so much with some of the bigger things in life that would seem more intimidating.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, absolutely. And then with that perfectionism, it’s funny, I ended up buying a bunch of stuff in terms of I’ve got three different kinds of letter openers now, and a nice little six-stack tray, and some special redaction markers, etc. And I guess there’s some perfectionism in there, it’s like, “If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it so freaking excellently.”

But I found that from my own motivational triggers at least, it’s really helping. It’s like, “I am well-equipped to tackle this thing now, so let’s get after it.” Whereas, before, it’s like, “Oh, it’s going to be so hard and boring, and I’m scared that I might realize I’ve neglected something important about insurance, or about taxes, or something, and then feel bad about myself.” So, anyways, yeah, a lot of stuff gets wrapped up in this procrastination.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, and sometimes, you’re right, like setting ourselves up with the best materials can really then motivate behavior. And sometimes people observe the opposite, and they get all the stuff, and they have all these great intentions, and still they can’t go through their mail, that there’s something missing that actually helps them overcome that barrier to really doing the behavior, so it can kind of go either direction.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, boy, it sounds like there’s a lot of nuances to be untangled here, so let’s do that. Maybe let’s zoom out a smidge. If you had a big idea, core message, or thesis behind The Psychology of Procrastination how would you articulate that?

Hayden Finch
My main thesis is that procrastination is not as much about time management as we would expect. That’s what you hear a lot when you’re talking about procrastination, is you need to schedule, you need to plan, or you need to manage your time better. To me, poor time management can certainly affect procrastination, and improving those skills can be helpful, but, ultimately, overcoming procrastination requires addressing the deeper emotional causes. Overcoming procrastination is about emotion management as much as time management.

Pete Mockaitis
Tweet that, Hayden. That’s good. Uh-huh.

Hayden Finch
Yeah. Right.

Pete Mockaitis
I think that distinction does a lot right there. Cool. So, then I’m curious, okay, well, we’ll get in the how in just a moment. Then, is there any distinguishing or defining we should do about procrastination itself? Like, in some ways, I think we know it when we see it, it’s like, “Well, yeah, that’s procrastination.” But how do we distinguish between procrastination versus, “Oh, I’m taking a break,” or, “This is actually another important thing that’s popped up and needs my attention”?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, there are different forms of procrastination. And so, there’s actively procrastinating versus passively procrastinating. So, active procrastination means, “Oh, I’m going to work on that later.” I’m making this active decision to do it later so that I can do this other thing instead. And that other thing may be something that is also important, maybe more important, or maybe also important but less important, or something that’s not important at all but just something that you want to do. So, I’m actively making the decision to put something off until later.

And there’s also the passive procrastination, which is just like just not getting around to the stuff, just not getting around to making a doctor’s appointment or to calling your grandma or something like that. It just doesn’t come around. You’re passively procrastinating on those things but not really intending to. So, that’s one important distinction, is, “Am I doing this on purpose? Am I purposely putting this off? Or, am I just like not getting around to doing these things that I need to be doing?”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. And so then, either way, there’s something that ought to be done that you’re not doing.

Hayden Finch
Right, yeah. That’s essentially the definition of procrastination. And you bring up a good point, which is, like, there are lots of things that need to be done in life, so how do you distinguish if I’m working on something that’s important, how do I know if the stuff that is waiting in line is being procrastinated or I’m just not getting to it yet? And that’s a matter of priority.

By definition, there can only be one most important thing, and that’s your priority. And our job in overcoming procrastination is to get really serious about what is the most important, or most urgent thing to be done right now, and what are the other things that need to wait. And you’ll see your mind getting really creative with excuses to kind of trick you into changing the priority order, and making something seem like a greater priority than something else.

And so, you really have to be savvy in calling yourself out when you’re lying to yourself or when you’re making excuses that aren’t helpful in really prioritizing your list.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s so powerful. And a couple things you said reminded me of the conversation we had with Perry Marshall who talked about the 80/20 Rule and marketing and other domains, and it’s intriguing. And for me, that’s been so huge with priority, is if I can quantify, like, “What is the expected profit created per hour invested?” as I think about different business initiatives, like, if that’s what I’m trying to achieve.

Then if I lay it out there, I can be dazzled by, “Sure enough, that one is ten times as much as that other one. So, even though it’s unpleasant, I should probably really do that one.” And it’s powerful and beautiful to be able to see it in black and white in such stark dramatically differing terms. Although, often, it is not that clear, it is not that quantified, and it’s much fuzzier.

Well, now, sorry, I’m pausing here because I want to jump right into, “How do I determine the priority?” but maybe that’s not the perfect sequence. Oh, perfectionism. Uh-oh. That’s so meta. So, yeah, let’s just do it. So, how do you think about determining priority?

Hayden Finch
Well, there are a lot of different ways that you can do that. There’s The Eisenhower Matrix, which is if you can imagine is this sort of two-by-two matrix of urgent, not urgent, important, not important. And so, you’ve got a box that’s both urgent and important, and a box that’s neither urgent nor important, and then the other two as well. And you can kind of categorize your tasks into that matrix.

And so, the things that are most important and most urgent are probably going to be your highest priority things. These are kind of emergencies in your life, or rapidly approaching deadlines, things like that. Things that are urgent but not important might be interruptions, so someone asking you, like a coworker asking you on your opinion on something, or for feedback on something. That may be kind of urgent, especially to your coworker but not especially important to you, so that might be a little bit lower priority for you.

Or things that are important to you but not necessarily urgent. These are projects that you want to work on that have no deadlines. So, organizing your closets or making a doctor’s appointment. These things are important but not necessarily urgent, so they’re also going to kind of be in the middle of your list. And then things at the bottom of your list are going to be things that are neither urgent nor important.

So, these are distractions in life. This is social media, this is just hanging out, this is kind of our time-wasters are definitely in that category. And these are going to be at the bottom of our list, and, hopefully, we’ll get there but in terms of prioritizing our time, we want to start with those things that are most urgent and most important. And, again, I haven’t said this, but you want to overcome the urge to, like, just use urgency to measure your priorities, and really looking at the importance of it too.

Pete Mockaitis
Absolutely. And I think that you’re right in terms of the priority can slide or sort of like we rationalize or deceive ourselves. And so, you can say anything is important, like, “It’s important that I play this video game because self-care is essential. I’ve been working so hard and I need a break.”

But the flipside, it could be, “Well, yeah, self-care is important. You have been working hard, you should have a rest, and this isn’t going to fill you up as much as any number of other activities which might require a little bit more effort, and might not be as immediately accessible, do.”

Hayden Finch
And that’s where the emotional stuff comes in. When you’re really in tuned with your emotions, you can see that your emotions are making the decision to procrastinate more so than you actually making that decision to put something off strategically. So, the emotion is something like, “I just don’t want to work on that project,” or, “I just don’t want to open the mail right now.”

And so, whatever emotion word we would put on that experience, that is what’s making the decision to put it off versus you sitting down, and saying, “Well, mail is kind of like it’s important but not especially urgent, so, therefore, I’m going to kind of put it in the middle of my list.” Like, that’s a very rational process but that’s very rarely what happens because, instead, our emotions are making those decisions for us.

Pete Mockaitis
You know, Hayden, I don’t know how many times I’ve dreamt about this ultimate holy grail, and maybe it’s not achievable for us mortals, but exactly that notion, “I just don’t want to.” I think I’ve even written this on a goal sheet somewhere, it’s like, I would like to make “I just don’t want to” or, “I just don’t feel like it” almost irrelevant in terms of the power it holds over me. It’s like, “Duly noted, emotion, but we’re going to do it anyway, so too bad.”

And so, tell me, Hayden, is that an achievable goal or is the state of humanity incapable of that ideal?

Hayden Finch
Well, we can’t certainly eradicate that as an experience. I think that’s what most of us sort of envision, it’s just like, “I have this emotion, I don’t want it, so I’m just going to get rid of it. I’m just going to amputate that from my experience.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, sounds nice.

Hayden Finch
Probably not an achievable goal, so it’s more helpful to figure out, “How do I have that feeling, that ‘I don’t want to’ feeling, and put that in my pocket, carry it with me, but continue to choose my behavior in the direction that I want it to be?” So, it’s making this distinction where, “I can have that feeling but choose a behavior that’s incompatible with it, so I can exercise, or do this documentation, or go through the mail, even though I have this feeling that I don’t want to. I’m just going to put that in my pocket, carry it with me because I can’t get rid of it, and then do the behavior anyways.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, certainly. Yeah, understood. Yeah, the feeling is there, it doesn’t just disappear at will, but what is possible – it sounds like you’re saying, tell me if I’m accurate – is that with a high percentage, now, you tell me, Hayden, is it 100, is it 90? With a high percentage, with practice, and mastery, one can, with a high percentage, say, “Duly noted, I-just-don’t-feel-like-it emotion. I’m going to put this aside and proceed, regardless.” Is that accurate?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, and I love the way you just did that. You talked to the feeling, and that’s helpful, right? What that’s doing is taking the feeling from being, like, enveloping you, and you’re putting it out in front of you, and you’re speaking to it as if it’s something separate, because, in effect, it is, and you’re saying, “Hey, feeling, I hear you, I see you, I’m going to validate you, but I’m not going to let you make the decisions for me because you are separate from me. So, yes, I’m going to acknowledge you, say duly noted,” and then continue in the direction that you want to go.

This, of course, yes, is more difficult in real life than I’m making it sound, and it requires a lot of, like, emotional skill, but you can learn that, those skills, so you can learn that and you can improve those skills over time.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I think that’s really nicely said in terms of talking to the emotion, and “I hear you” validating. I think I’ve wrestled with this in my own journey with regard to emotions, is if folks say, “Oh, you know, Pete, emotions have information. Be curious about them.”

And I think that’s probably generally good advice for most people but, as a podcast host, I am pathologically curious, I’d say, in terms of…or a good distinction I’ve gathered is that emotions cannot be solved but rather felt, in that they have information but sometimes that information isn’t really relevant, or novel, or actionable, like, “Oh, I’m angry about this thing, which is a lot like this thing that’s happened before and is likely to continue.”

It’s like, “Yeah, that’s true. Yup, that much to be done, so duly noted. Thank you. Thank you, anger. We’re going to go ahead and do this other thing now.” Or, that’s how I’ve come to terms with things. What is your professional opinion, Doctor?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, for sure, emotions exist for a reason. Like, humans have evolved with emotions inside of us for a reason. Like, evolution tends to get rid of things that aren’t particularly helpful, and so humans and lots of other animals have emotions, so we have to believe that that’s there for a reason, because emotions are somewhat metabolically expensive in your brain, so, again, they must be serving a purpose.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, true that.

Hayden Finch
And so, yes, we do want to pay attention to our emotions and try to figure out what they’re telling us, and, at the same time, what they’re telling us does not need to necessarily dictate our behavior. In a perfect world, that’s why we have emotions because, for example, if I see a snake, that’s going to automatically, without me even thinking about it, motivate my behavior to get away from that snake.

And it happens so quickly that it’s life-sustaining, that I’m moving away from that snake before I can think about, “Should I? Is that snake dangerous? Is that one poisonous? Is that one going to bite me?” We don’t have to do all of that. We’re just already moving. And that’s really helpful, and those are the reasons that we have emotions in the first place.

But, in our human lives where it’s not all…like emotions aren’t always triggered by things that are life-threatening, we have to be a little bit more thoughtful about the behaviors that are following our emotions. There’s a natural behavior attached to every emotion. So, if I’m sad, I naturally kind of want to hide and just slow down. If I’m anxious, I kind of naturally want to plan and worry.

And that can be helpful in certain contexts but we just have to ask ourselves, we have to pause on that emotion, and say, “What is this emotion trying to tell me? And is this one of those contexts where I need to do exactly what it’s telling me to do? Or, is this one of those tricky contexts that I actually need to go in the total opposite direction?”

Pete Mockaitis
Hey, I like that a lot. Natural behavior, and then we assess that, like, “Hmm, interesting suggestion you have proposed here. Let’s consider, is that the optimal move?” Okay. Well, so, Hayden, just kind of rounding out the why before we dig into the nitty-gritty hows, you mentioned it can be possible to practice to have a very high percentage of “Duly noted, I-don’t-feel-like-it, and we’re going to proceed, regardless.”

Could you also share with us a particularly inspiring story of someone you’ve seen really turned it around in terms of they had some procrastination that was causing some challenges, and then they just really came out the other side, and were taking care of business?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, I have a woman I used to work with that, again, very high functioning. She’s an attorney in a pretty prestigious position, and have obviously been very successful her whole life. She was very successful academically and, honestly, in everything she ever did. Like, she’s just super bright and driven, but part of her success was because she would pull all-nighters to get her briefs written, or her motions written, or whatever, and she was kind of constantly asking the court for extensions because she just didn’t have the time to finish some of the things that she needed to write for the court. And that became problematic, as you can imagine.

Pete Mockaitis
The judges are tired of that.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, they kind of catch onto this, and they’ll put some limits on it. And so, overcoming procrastination became important for her because like, she’s not 20 anymore, like pulling all-nighters is not necessarily a great way of living your life as an attorney, and asking the judges for extensions is not super helpful either.

And so, we worked for a long time on setting up some systems in her life that are going to support her moving up deadlines and being able to work on things earlier, but mostly we were looking at what are the emotions that drive the procrastination. And for her, it was a lot of distraction. It was a lot of distraction by other things that were also interesting, or overdoing it on one brief that then made it so that she couldn’t work on another one.

So, kind of like you, she’s just super curious and would do too much on one project and then procrastinate another project because of that. And so, we worked a lot on kind of figuring out emotionally what’s going on here. So, curiosity here is driving some of the procrastination, and being able to work with that so that she could set that curiosity aside, say, “Yes, duly noted, I’m very curious about this project, and I actually need to shift my focus to this other project that I’m a little bit less curious about.”

So, doing that kind of emotional work in addition to really setting herself up with some good systems for prioritizing tasks and subtasks, and knowing really what the priorities are, and how to manage her time so that she can get everything done on time. And now she holds very few all-nighters, or like less of an all-nighter, like, “I’m going to be able to sleep for two or three hours tonight instead of zero hours,” which was a significant progress.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Cool. All right. So, I’m inspired, I’m motivated, let’s dig into some of the means by which we win against procrastination. So, we talked about it’s really much about emotional management as opposed to just time management. So, could you orient us, you’ve got a procrastination cycle, how does this work?

Hayden Finch
Right. So, this cycle kind of starts with the idea that I’m going to have a thought about working on something, “Oh, I should open the mail.” And then some things are going to happen after that thought. And those thoughts that come up after you have that initial thought, that’s what, ultimately, is going to determine whether you are successful at following through with opening the mail or you defer to a different task.

And so, that interim space is really super duper important. So, I think about working on a project, so I think about opening the mail, and then I have this feeling, this, like, “Ugh, I really don’t want to. That’s kind of boring, or there’s a lot stacked up, or I don’t know what some of it is, or it could be bad news, like I could have some bills in there I can’t pay.” There’s some feeling that comes up. And then I want to get that feeling out of my body as quickly as possible because we don’t like feelings.

So, I’m just trying to get rid of that feeling. And the quickest, most effective way to do that is to just say, “You know what, I’ll do that later. I’m going to go over here and I’m going to go get a snack, or I’m going to play a video game, or I’m going to work on a work project that’s also really important. I’m going to go do something else.”

And as soon as I make that decision to go do something else, that feeling goes away. And that is really reinforcing, or in other words, kind of addictive to our brains, that relief from that anxiety that we felt or whatever that kind of feeling was, that relief from that feeling is kind of what makes us do that. And because our brain figured that out, that that felt good to get that feeling out of our body, it’s going to do that the next time too.

So, like, “Oh, I got to get around to opening that mail. Oh, yeah, I really don’t want to. Oh, there could be bills in there that I can’t pay. Oh, you know, I’m going to work on this other thing. Oh.” That relief, again, your brain learns that relief feels good, and it’s going to encourage you to do that every time.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. That’s good. It’s not so much that doing the other thing is just orgasmically pleasurable in terms of, like, “I’m being deluged with dopamine because this snack is so amazing, or this video game is so good.” I love that distinction you brought there in terms of we’re addicted to the relief, like, “I was feeling yucky, and then I felt un-yucky, and, oh, that’s real nice,” even if the alternative isn’t all that amazing.

Hayden Finch
Right. Yeah, even just less yucky. If I feel 2% less yucky doing this other project, then that’s a 2% gain for my brain, and, “Ooh, that’s better, so we’re going to move in that direction.” So, yeah, our procrastination doesn’t have to be just something that we actually enjoy or want to do. It just has to be incrementally better than what we otherwise would do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I really like that a lot. And so then, okay, so that’s sort of the cycle. And you say it’s the thoughts we have that determine which pathway we’re going to end up going down. So, can you give us a demonstration? We heard some of the thoughts that don’t take us where we want to go. What’s the flipside of that?

Hayden Finch
Right. So, that would be a lot like what you demonstrated. So, here I am, I have this thought, like, “Oh, I really need to get to that mail. Like, oh, gosh, there could be some bills in there that I can’t pay. And there’s so much stacked up, I feel so guilty about just not being good at this, and there’s just a mass of mail. Okay, yup, yup, there is that guilty feeling, there’s that anxiety. Yup, there it is. Duly noted that this feels bad.”

“I can actually feel bad and do this at the same time. I can feel guilty about this and open the mail at the same time. Those are not mutually exclusive. So, here I am, I’m going to put that guilt in my pocket, and I’m just going to carry that with me, and I’m going to feel guilty while I open the mail. And maybe I don’t commit to opening all of it. I’m just going to open up a couple pieces of mail. That’s what I feel like I can commit to today. And so, I open a couple of pieces of mail, and then I move on.” And so then, I’m going to feel some relief after that.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s true.

Hayden Finch
And that feels good to our brains too. So, now I’ve actually done some work, and then I feel relieved, and that’s kind of the process that we want, is that relief to come after engaging with the task rather than before.

Pete Mockaitis
Ooh, that’s really nice. That’s really nice. I think I heard an interview with Dr. Andrew Huberman in which he suggested that whenever there’s a means by which we can very easily acquire feeling good, whether that’s alcohol or nicotine or porn or whatever, there’s a risk that addiction and not a great cycle can begin there, as opposed to what you’ve laid out is that sounds like what I’m picking up.

It’s like, here, we’ve got a choice in terms of which pathway are we going to go down. And in so doing, which behaviors are going to get reinforced. Is that accurate, Hayden, that if we do choose to procrastinate this one time, we’ll be more likely to procrastinate next time? And, vice versa, if we do choose to do the unpleasant thing, we’ll be better able to do the unpleasant thing next time? Is that accurate or am I reading too much into it?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, right. So, your brain is paying attention to these reinforcement schedules, and it is noticing that, “I avoided the task, I decided not to open the mail, and I felt better.” So, in this case, avoidance is being reinforced. And, in general, that’s kind of not what we want to happen in our lives. But if, instead, I actually engage with the task, maybe not completely but in a way that feels manageable for me today, then my relief comes from engaging the task rather than avoiding the task, and that is what we want to see more of.

And the more you do that, yes, you’re right, the more you do that, the more resilient you become. And so then, what feels manageable today, which is opening two pieces of mail, like, down the road somewhere, I might be able to open ten pieces of mail, or maybe even feel capable of approaching the entire task.

So, we want to start where we’re at, and then, as we kind of build some resilience to that where that starts to feel easy, then open that up a little bit so that we actually can do more and more, and tolerate more distress.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Okay. So, we talked about the cycle and we talked about prioritizing. Any other just absolutely core themes, principles, practices that make a world of difference in terms of getting better at not procrastinating?

Hayden Finch
One thing that comes to mind is this idea of motivation, and I hear that come up a lot in my clinic about, “I’m just not motivated to exercise,” or, “I’m not motivated to write my notes, do my documentation,” “I’m just not motivated to work on this project.” That comes up a lot as a factor that perpetuates procrastination.

And so, we really have to rethink motivation in this context. And there’s a lot floating around the internet, so your listeners have probably encountered this, that motivation is fleeting, it’s unreliable, it’s definitely not something that we want to rely on to motivate behavior. Like, we don’t. We want to choose our behavior, whether we have motivation or not, because this misconception that, “If I’m motivated, then I can take action,” but it’s actually the reverse, “If I take action, and then I start to see results from that, then I may feel motivated down the road.” But that’s neither here or there.

In overcoming procrastination, motivation doesn’t even really need to be part of the equation. We just need to focus on tolerating the distress, the emotional piece, and then choosing our behavior that’s aligned with our goals rather than what we feel like doing or not doing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And then, motivation, fickle, fleeting, and so it’s not essential to have but it’d be nice to have. Are there any things that we can do to, over the long term, build up more? I guess, is it just doing that path that brings about more resilience will also yield more motivation? Or, is it just like “Can’t count on it. It’ll come and go, and just move on”?

Hayden Finch
We certainly don’t want to count on it but definitely there are things that we can do to enhance motivation. So, these are things like reminding ourselves why, “Why is it important to go through the mail? Why don’t I just want to let this accumulate?” And if I have a good compelling reason that this is an important task to do, and I remind myself why it’s important, then I’m probably going to feel more motivated to engage in it, or, in other words, I’m going to feel more motivated to push through that “I don’t want to” feeling.

So, importantly, that “I don’t want to” feeling is probably still going to be there, but it’s a little bit easier to put that in your pocket and carry on when you have a compelling reason to do that. So, reminding yourself, like, “What are my values? What’s important to me? Why am I trying to do this?” that can be really helpful for being able to push through that discomfort.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Hayden, do you have any thoughts when we talk about the why? I think I’ve historically viewed the why as some grand ennobling purpose that just inspires and is maybe even extra fun to say and articulate, versus the why could, in fact, be pretty mundane, like, “Well, if you don’t open your mail, there could be some nasty bills that you haven’t paid and your credit score will go down, and you’re going to have to pay more for your next car payment, or mortgage, or something.”

And so, I think I’ve gathered that that’s a perfectly valid why that can nudge you and get the results even if it’s not all that inspiring and pretty.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it doesn’t have to be anything that you’re going to…that’s going to be tweetable. Like, it doesn’t have to be. Like, it can just be, like, “I need to get this stuff off the counter. That’s just an important thing to do, just clear this up so that’s it’s just not taking up space.” Or, also, it’s not taking up brain space, “Really, I keep having to think about the freaking mail, and that’s a silly waste of brain space, and so I’m just going to go ahead and do this so I can clear that up to think about things that I’m actually more interested in.”

Pete Mockaitis
Certainly. And so then, the why can be either carrot or stick, it can be pain or pleasure. Okay.

Hayden Finch
Right. Yes. Yes.

Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. And then I’m thinking, once we’re actually started which…well, maybe let’s talk about that. So, I’m thinking about Dr. Timothy Pychyl, I don’t know if I’m saying his name right, but he wrote another book about procrastination which I thought was pretty good. But that was one of the themes over and over again, it’s like, “Just get started,” which, in some ways, is, I don’t know, felt like an oversimplification, like, “Oh, you’re procrastinating? Well, just get started.”

But, on the flipside, it’s like, “But, no, it’s true. If you could just get like a minute or two into it, magic happens.” Can you comment on the “Just get started” concept?

Hayden Finch
Super important because that’s where the emotion, that’s your choice-point, like, “I have this emotion, and I have a choice to either avoid it or to tolerate it. And if I can just get started, every time I just get started, that is me tolerating that emotion even if I only get started for two pieces of mail. I’ve tolerated that emotion for longer than I, otherwise, would have, and that is a step in the right direction.”

And, typically, once we can overcome that first hump of the emotion, it’s kind of downhill from there. It’s a whole lot easier. It’s that first step that is the most difficult. And so, yeah, there’s some truth to that, that if we can just get started, and there are lots of ways that people have come up with how to do that.

Pete Mockaitis
Do tell.

Hayden Finch
And if we can just do that, that tends to help us down the road. It tends to help us continue the task longer.

Pete Mockaitis
Hayden, you said lots of ways, and I can’t let that go. What are some of these ways?

Hayden Finch
Well, like, with the mail example, right? I’m just going to commit to doing a little bit of the task. So, if I can break this big task into something smaller, “I’m going to unload the dishwasher. I’m just going to put away the forks,” or, “I’m going to do the laundry. I’m just going to fold the towels today.” If we can break it down to just one thing, that’s one way to get started. So, we’re not committing to doing the entire thing.

Or, commit to a certain amount of time, “I’m just going to do this for five minutes, and then I’m done after that. I’m only committing to five minutes of this hard thing, then I’m done.” Or, a renewable strategy, “So, I’m going to do this for five minutes, and then after five minutes, I’m going to ask myself whether I want to continue for another five minutes,” and then kind of having that renewable engagement with the task.

And so, there are lots of ways like that, that essentially, come down to breaking that task down into a small-enough component that it feels manageable. And that maybe, like, what’s manageable for you at the moment, if it’s something you’ve been putting off for a long, long time, that may be, “I’m just going to put one fork away, and that’s all I can manage today. Like, that’s just where I’m at, and that’s totally fine.”

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that’s so good. And it’s so funny that state of mind. I’m thinking I’ve had times where I’m looking at a kitchen island just full of junk. We got mail, we got trash, we got recycling, we got laundry, we got a car seat, because it’s big and convenient, it’s right there, so we stick things there. And so then, it’s overwhelming, it’s like, “Oh, there are so many things.”

And it’s funny, sometimes I will do a little bit and I’ll feel exhausted, like, “Ah, that’s all I can muster. I put the car seat on the stroller, which makes a lot more sense for it to be, and that’s good.” And other times, I do that and then I behold the wake, the space, that has been cleared, beautified, liberated, from that action. And I find it to be beautiful and inspiring such that I keep going.

And maybe this is just a fancy way of describing what motivation feels like in practice. But, Hayden, it’s just a mystery to me, is, why is it sometimes I take the path where it’s like, “Ooh, that was great. Let’s keep going,” and other times, I go, “Ugh, that was exhausting. Let’s stop”? What’s behind that?

Hayden Finch
Well, it’s a lot of things. Sometimes it comes down to emotional energy. We have a certain amount of emotional energy, and some days you’ve probably already spent a lot of your emotional energy on, “I didn’t sleep all that well,” and, “My boss was mad at me,” and, “I got in trouble for this thing,” and, “This project isn’t working out the way I want it to,” and, “There was no toilet paper in the bathroom.”

And so, by the time you get around to just cleaning off your island, like, “Ugh, I just put the car seat away,” is all you can muster. But other days that are going pretty well, you might have enough emotional energy to actually do the entire project. So, it just kind of depends, I think, a lot on kind of what’s already been stocking up for you in the day or the week or whatever time is leading up to that task.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, let’s say we did get started, mission accomplished. And then distraction appears, maybe it’s from the phone, maybe it’s from a knock on the door, “You got a minute?” or any number, or just our own internal thoughts, like, “Ooh, it’d be fun to go on Facebook right now.” What do you recommend for sticking with it once we’ve started?

Hayden Finch
Well, obviously, if you’re a person who’s prone to distraction, then you want to do the normal things to limit distractions. You’re going to leave your phone somewhere else or turn it off. You want to shut your office door. You want to take all of those steps that we all know we ought to do. I have nothing revolutionary to add there about limiting distractions. So, if you’re prone to distractions, you certainly want to do that.

And I think we have to be honest with ourselves about what we’re distracted by. So, if you’re distracted by your phone, you’re getting on social media, you’re checking text messages, or whatever, then your phone needs to go. And, also, I think we just kind of need to be honest with ourselves about how long we’re able to work before we take a break.

And we need to kind of schedule in some breaks, and that can get your key for people to, in terms of coming back from a break. But everyone needs breaks to just kind of refresh our energy and our focus, so we have to be thoughtful about that. But, certainly, limiting distractions is important, and setting ourselves up with systems that are going to help us with the distractions that you don’t normally think about.

So, you were mentioning getting distracted by your own thoughts or ideas. And so, one idea there is to keep a list where you can follow up with those ideas. So, right now, I am working on this memo, and I should not be getting on Facebook to look at the events that are going on this weekend. That’s a distraction. I’m going to write that down so that once I’m done with my time commitment to this memo, I’m going to follow up with the Facebook idea.

Or, I’m going to follow up with, “Oh, yeah, I want to do Wikipedia, that thing, like I’m going to follow up with that later because I’ve got a list. I don’t want to forget them so I’m going to make a list of them, but kind of having the discipline to, not right now, and just put that away,” which, again, is going to bring up some emotions, like, “I really want to get on Facebook. Oh, I really want to, like I’m really curious about that thing.” We have to tolerate that distress of postponing that experience until later.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Beautiful. Thank you. Hayden, tell me, anything else you really want to make sure to mention before we shift gears and hear about some of your favorite things?

Hayden Finch
I don’t know if I’ve said it, but like the emotional piece is super duper important. Yeah, I think it’s, like, I know, I’ve sort of beaten that dead horse, which is then my intention because I think that people continue to try to overcome procrastination again and again and again, and they’re trying similar strategies and not finding progress.

And I think it is because a lot of people are neglecting the emotional piece. So, that really has to be your focus, is trying to figure out that arch of your emotional experience. So, I think about doing something, I have this emotional experience in response to it, and then I choose my behavior accordingly. When you can master that emotional arch, you are going to make so much more progress in overcoming procrastination.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Now, could you share a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Hayden Finch
There’s this author and finance expert named Nathan Morris, and he has this quote, like, “It’s not always that we need to do more, but rather that we need to focus on less.” And I find that pretty inspiring. He talks about kind of editing your life frequently and ruthlessly.

And, for me, being the person that I am, who’s like prone to anxiety and perfectionism and doing more, more, more, it always feels like if I just do more or work harder, then I will get to my destination. But I think there’s a lot of truth in what he’s saying, which is, like, we just need to focus on less. Like, choose the priority and focus on that, and then that’s where success will come in.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Hayden Finch
There’s this study where they had human subjects at a starting line, and they had to walk to a finish line, and along the way, they had to pick up a bucket. And they’re going to encounter one bucket sooner, and then there’s another bucket kind of closer to the finish line. And they can choose either one, they just have to walk with a bucket from start line to the finish line. And so, rationally, what we should do is, like, pick up that second bucket that’s, like, closer to the finish line, and just walk from there to the finish line.

But actually, people tended to pick up that first bucket and then walk farther with this heavy bucket to the finish line. And what I love about that study is that it sort of highlights how irrational human behavior is, that we will, in some cases, do more work for no good reason. Like, obviously, in that case, just pick up the second bucket and we won’t have to carry it farther. We are predictably irrational, and that’s why psychology is so interesting.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s so funny, and I guess we have all of our own little reasons for that. It’s like, “I’m going to show this bucket who’s boss. I’m a tough guy. I can handle carrying a bucket the whole way, so I’m going to do it. This is boring, so carrying a bucket makes it a little more interesting, so I’m going to do it, I think.” Yeah, okay. And a favorite book?

Hayden Finch
Sophie Mort, who happens to be a friend of mine, wrote A Manual for Being Human, which I think is revolutionary because you know how people is, “Oh, there’s no manual for, like, being a human. There’s no manual for figuring this out.” Well, she, like, literally wrote the manual for being human in this space in psychology and mental health. And it’s a great read for people trying to figure out how to manage mental health and really thrive in life.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Hayden Finch
I love Google Reminders. I think that is such a big help in my life for trying to keep me on track so that I don’t have to keep it all in my head. But I can just set up reminders to remind me to do stuff every four days, or every six weeks, or whatever it is. Love that tool.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite habit, something that helps you be awesome at your job?

Hayden Finch
My sleep schedule is definitely number one. I am very rigid about my sleep schedule. I protect sleep at all costs. I am headed to bed at 8:20 every night. I sleep by 8:30, so that when my alarm goes off at 4:45, I am well-rested and ready to go. I think that is the secret to just about everybody’s success, is making sure you protect your sleep schedule.

Pete Mockaitis
And is there a key nugget you share that really connects with folks, resonates, they tweet you?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, it’s got to be that. Like, it’s not time management. It’s emotion management. And once people get that, which it makes sense, but once you get that in real life, once you experience that, like, that unlocks everything. And, really, honestly, when it comes to mental health, that’s kind of the bottom line with everything. It is emotion management more than what you would typically think of, “How do I overcome depression?” Well, you manage the emotions and separate your behavior from that.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Hayden Finch
My website is HaydenFinch.com. There, you can learn more about The Finch Center for High Functioning Anxiety, you can contact me and work with me directly, or find links to the books I’ve written on the psychology of procrastination, or habits, all there at HaydenFinch.com.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Hayden Finch
Yeah, I would say, based on that quote that I just made, it’s not about doing more in life, that’s not it. It’s about editing your life. So, find something to edit to create more space because more space in your life is going to be a greater ability to stay in the driver’s seat and manage those emotions that are going to come up. You need space to be able to do the emotion management piece.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Hayden, this has been a treat. I wish you much luck and very little procrastination.

Hayden Finch
Yeah, thank you. I’ve enjoyed this and, hopefully, that will help your listeners be awesome at their jobs.

Pete Mockaitis
Christopher, welcome to How to be Awesome at Your Job.

Christopher Cox
Hi, Pete. Yeah, thanks for having me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m excited to dig into some wisdom from your book The Deadline Effect: Inside Elite Organizations That Have Mastered the Ticking Clock, but, first, I want you to regale us with some tales from Everest base camp and/or summiting Kilimanjaro.

Christopher Cox
Oh, wow, yeah, that takes me back. That was one long trip that I took between college and grad school. I went all the way around the world, and all sorts of things happened on those trips. So, climbing Kilimanjaro is maybe the most dramatic story because it’s a multi-day journey, and on the last day, you have to climb up, at least on the route that I took, a very steep, I don’t want to call it a cliff, but it’s almost a cliff, and it’s covered in ice and snow, and it snowed that night that I was supposed to climb.

And you start off at about 2:00 in the morning. And part of the reason you start it at 2:00 in the morning is you want the ice to be frozen. During the day, it starts to melt and it gets slippery. And so, we’re climbing up the ice and I was with one other person, my guide, and after about 30 minutes or 45 minutes up this steep, steep expanse, his flashlight goes out and he asked me, “Do you have your flashlight?” And I said, “Yes, I do.” And then we had about 40 seconds of that flashlight before it went out, too.

And so, we did the final three hours of the climb in the cold and the snow and the steep in complete darkness, which was frightening at first, but then basically he said, “I want you to put your feet exactly where my feet are and we’ll just climb up that way.” And we made it and we reached the top exactly as the sun rose over the savannah, and it was a feeling of pure euphoria.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s awesome. Cool. Well, so digging into the book a bit, can you share any particularly surprising, fascinating, counterintuitive discoveries you’ve made when putting together The Deadline Effect?

Christopher Cox
Yes. So, the book, I sort of did two modes of research to write the book. One was reading as many studies as I could on procrastination and deadlines and productivity that I could. And the other was I went out and did a bunch of reporting, so I ended up embedding in nine different organizations and learning how they worked.

And so, each of those two paths of research led me to different insights. I would say that just from reading academic literature, the first thing that jumped out at me, which I saw replicated in study after study, was how powerful shortening a deadline can be. One of the very first papers I read was about the US Census and they were trying to figure out how to get more people to reply to the mail-in census. So, not when a person comes through a door but just the thing you get in the mail.

And it turned out that if you can increase the response rate for the mail-in census by one percentage point, it would save the US government $75 million per percentage point. So, there’s a big motivation to get more people to mail these things in. And so, they did some research and studies and experiments to see how they could increase that response rate.

And one of the things they discovered, which seemed counterintuitive to me at first, was if you actually give people less time to reply, they’re more likely to do so. And so, they did an experiment where they had two groups. They both had the same deadline to return the mail-in response to the census, but one group had a week less to do it.

And the group that had a week less to do it was more likely to turn it in. And there are all sorts of other positive benefits they saw, the data was higher quality, if the people had less time to turn it in, too. And so, I read that and that really got me intrigued, and that’s when I started to sort of delve in deeper into this subject.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, that is good. And so, you know, it’s funny, with these sorts of things, you can, after the fact, 20/20 hindsight, say, “Oh, yeah. Well, of course, if they don’t have to say, ‘Oh, I could do that. I need some time over the next few weeks,” is very different than, “Oh, shoot, I better get on this now,” while they have the piece of paper in hand. So, I guess I see the psychological effect at work, at least that’s my speculation. Is that the driving force there?
Christopher Cox
Yeah, I think that’s right. There is a tendency to sort of put things off into the last minute if you possibly can. And I often say, like, the very worst deadline that you can give to yourself is to say, “As soon as possible.” It’s better to have it be concrete, and even if it’s further off than you might want it to be. So, as soon as possible, and you feel like, “Okay, that means I need to get it done tomorrow.” But if you actually set a concrete date of, “No, it’s going to get done in a week,” that tends to be more effective in getting you to actually complete whatever project it is you’re trying to get done.

And so, one of the other things that came up in sort of looking at how adjusting the timing of the deadline can increase your ability to complete a project was I read all these papers on procrastination. And procrastination affects us all to greater or lesser extents. One economist I read called it sort of the universal human problem.

But I read this interesting paper called “Procrastination of Enjoyable Experiences.” So, you think you procrastinate things you don’t want to do, but it turns out we all tend to procrastinate things that we do want to do. And there are two social scientists named Susanne Shu and Ayelet Gneezy, and they devised this pretty ingenious experiment.

They gave out coupons for a free slice of cake. So, again, this is not something that you would think people would want to avoid. And one of the coupons expired in three weeks, and a different version of the coupon expired in two months. And it turned out that the people who had three weeks, so more than a month less time to get their free cake, were five times more likely to use their coupon.

Pete Mockaitis
Five times.

Christopher Cox
Yeah, like a dramatic effect of shortening the deadline there. And I think it’s just what you say, with that urgency provided by the deadline, and not giving people time to be distracted from what they’re supposed to be doing, you’re going to increase your likelihood of getting things done.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, these are tantalizing insights right there. If we were to zoom out a bit, what would you say is the core message, thesis, big idea behind The Deadline Effect?

Christopher Cox
Well, in terms of what I saw in the organizations that I studied, there were two big conclusions that sort of tie everything together. The first was successful organizations take deadlines seriously, and that sounds very simple but that is step number one. You have to take them seriously. You have to set a deadline. You have to make it concrete.

And the second thing that united them was they set up their deadlines in the organization so that no individual employee ever faced a deadline alone, so they increased what social scientists called interdependence. And so, that meant that procrastination, more or less, gets taken out of the equation because there are so many different enforcement mechanisms on any individual person trying to get something done that they’re goaded into action. They’re kept to schedule because so many other people are relying on them.

Pete Mockaitis
Fascinating. So, while an individual might have a deadline for himself or herself, there is a broader deadline that a team or a collection of contributors is all working towards, thus ensuring that the individual is able to get it done so that the team gets it over the line by the date. Is that accurate?

Christopher Cox
Yeah, that is accurate. And so, the first place that I saw this came from my own working life before I wrote this book, and even now I have a career as a magazine editor. And I began the book with a question sort of in the back of my mind, which is, I worked at a lot of different magazines over the past 20 years, and they are populated by people who can be weirdos and artists and writers and all sorts of people who you don’t expect to be the most disciplined human beings on earth.

And yet, somehow, month after month for a monthly magazine, or week after week for a weekly magazine, they publish something, they get a magazine out there consistently. For a while, I was the chief editor of Harper’s Magazine, which has been publishing since 1850. And so, what is that – 172 years? They haven’t missed an issue in 172 years. How could that be after all sorts of different people coming through there?

And so, I started to look at what made that possible, and I think they did those two things. They took deadlines seriously from the beginning. Deadline is a word that exists from the publishing industry. And they set up the process of publishing so that it was highly interdependent.

So, in my work as an editor, I would get writers to file an article to me, and that very relationship, the two of us working together, me reminding the writer to stick to the deadline, that was the first bit of interdependence that helped get things done on time but it wasn’t just that. I, in turn, was hearing from the art department, saying, “Where is that article? We need to start to think of the photographs for it or commissioning artwork for it.” And the fact checkers are saying the same thing to me, and to the art department, and the copy editors were saying the same thing.

And so, eventually, you have an organization that’s highly interdependent where everyone is working together to get this project done, even though it ultimately is going to appear as an article with one person’s name on it. And so, that is a machine built to get people to meet their deadlines. And that same writer, if left to their own devices, they’re writing an essay for themselves at their desk, they’re not going to show it to anyone, could end up procrastinating indefinitely, and often do.

I definitely know writers that I work with who say, “I cannot work unless I have the demands set up upon me by magazine deadlines, editors, and everyone else waiting for me to turn my copy in.”

Pete Mockaitis
And so, I’m curious, having worked with so many writers, how often do they hit the deadline that you originally established with them?

Christopher Cox
Well, I would say that the writers who will meet a deadline without me saying anything are definitely the exception rather than the rule. But that’s where I come in.

First, my mere presence there, saying, “Please give this to me,” reminding them helps a bit. And then I can also start using some of the strategies that might suggest themselves from the academic literature, which is if I have a writer and I know that I have to have a piece ready to print on Friday, I’m not going to tell them to send it to me on Thursday. I’m going to tell them to send it to me a week ahead of time.

And so, you start pushing their deadline up, which pushes them into action earlier, and that gives everyone else more time to refine the piece, make it better, and it sort of becomes a positive reinforcement loop as you sort of work to make the article as good as possible before publication.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, so if we’re zooming in to professionals who want to do better about managing their time and meeting goals and objectives, are there some deadline magic, tactics, principles, guides that we can take on to achieve more better?

Christopher Cox
Yes. So, I think that, set a deadline, make it concrete, that’s step one. If you can set your own deadline, then give yourself maybe just a little bit less time to finish it than you feel comfortable with. That shorter deadline might serve as an inspiration. And then the bigger the project, the more you might start thinking about strategies, like self-imposing interim deadlines.

And this is something that I saw when I went out reporting. I spent some time with Jean-George Vongerichten, who’s a famous restaurateur. He has, oh, gosh, 45, maybe it’s more, restaurants around the world. And I went with Jean-George as he opened two restaurants back-to-back over two days in May of 2019, and watching him do that, I got to see his organization was a machine that was perfectly tailored to opening restaurants. They’ve done it often and they knew how to do it.

Meeting their deadline but having the final product, having the restaurant be as buttoned-up as possible. One of the reasons they want it to be as buttoned-up as possible on day one is they knew the reviewers are going to come that first week often, and they can’t afford to have something sloppy being put in front of a reviewer who might make or break the restaurant.

And so, Jean-George and his team were masters of using interim deadlines. And the way that they get that was something called mock services, which is basically what it sounds like. As soon as they could, and as often as they could, they served meals in these new restaurants, the restaurant before it had open, pretending that it was a regular service night at the restaurant.

So, I went to one of the two restaurants, it was called Fulton that’s in Lower Manhattan, and I first went to it about 30 days before it opened. And that first day that I was there, they’re not serving to real customers but they sat down some of the wait staff, they even brought in members of the construction company’s staff, and I think some interior decorators, and they sat them down and they served them some of the dishes they’re planning for that restaurant, and they worked on fine tuning the service part of it, they worked on fine tuning the taste, they asked them for their opinion on everything.

And they did that day after day after day, every single day until it opened. And that was, one, it had ensured that on actual opening day, that they were ready, and it also allowed them to improve consistently over that same period of all these mock services up until opening day, and, of course, beyond. But on opening day, you wouldn’t have known that it was the first day it was operating. Everything was pretty darn seamless. I was very impressed by what I saw there.

Pete Mockaitis
And that notion of opening day of not necessarily being what we assume when we think about an opening day, you also saw in theatrical releases. Can you talk about that?

Christopher Cox
Yes. So, I spent some time in the public theater, and I watched them develop a show for its world premiere. And what I saw there were a few different things happening at once. They had that same sort of daily check-in, daily revisions that Jean-George had in his restaurant.

But one of the things that really struck me about watching this come together was I had a fairly naïve notion of what a theatrical production looked like when you put it on. I sort of thought, “Okay, you write the play and you rehearse it, and then there’s dress rehearsal, and then it’s done.” But what I actually saw with this performance was dress rehearsal was sort of the midpoint in a longer process of improving the performance, improving the play that they’re putting on.

So, I went to dress rehearsal, and then after that, I went to the first of several preview performances where they had audiences there, and they actually changed the performance considerably based on the feedback from the audience, which makes all the sense in the world. Audiences sort of who you’re to perform for but I found it inspiring, really. And then when I talked to the director, he said, “Oh, yeah, like this is the way it’s always worked in theater.”

The social science name for it is sense-making and updating. So, you take a pause after each day and you figure out what’s going right and what’s going wrong, and then you update according to what you assess along those lines. And the theater producers have figured out how to formalize that process in a way that we don’t often do in our regular life.

And seeing that in the theater made me realize that that is the sort of maneuver that we all need to do in our everyday life, and not just for work projects; for everything. Like, take a pause every day or more often than that, depending on what you’re doing, and take time to assess what you’re doing, the effectiveness, and think about how you might update it.

And so, the interesting academic study I read about sense-making and updating, it was called “More and Less Effective Updating” and it studied 19 different ER teams during a training exercise. And the training exercise was they had a young boy come in as a patient – again, it’s just an exercise, it wasn’t real – who’s complaining of troubled breathing.

And the experiment had been set up so that a crucial piece of equipment, a sort of a mask they use to help the child to breathe, had failed, and they were testing to see who’s going to stop and just try to make sense of the situation, like, “Why are we not helping this child? This device, which is supposed to help the child breathe, why is it not working?” And if you do it well, you will see that this mask is broken, and you’ll update your behavior accordingly.

And the teams that were most effective were the ones who had that instinct, I guess, to stop what they’re doing, even though there’s a child on the table and everything is pushing you to sort of just heedlessly push forward. It doesn’t seem like there’s time to stop and assess the situation. But those teams that did were the ones that saved the child’s life in this exercise because they were able to say, “Okay, let’s figure out what’s wrong here.” And once they figured out the broken mask, it was easy to keep the child healthy and stable.

That was sort of a high-stakes version of the same process but from medicine, to theater, to restaurant opening, it’s a process that we would all do well to remember to do.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s handy, certainly. So, we have a deadline, and so some piece of completion must…I guess there’s all kinds of layers of final, and in some ways it’s never final. You’re constantly potentially iterating and tweaking on end but there are key milestones in terms of, “Someone is going to eat our food,” or, “The doors are going to open to people from the public,” and those are different dates and different milestones and different expectations.

Christopher Cox
Yeah, no, exactly. I think that, we talked earlier about interdependence, there’s a different sort of…it’s not really interdependence but it’s the same sort of mechanism where if you know that there’s going to be a real-paying audience out there watching you perform, or real-paying group of people coming in to eat dinner at your restaurant, that adds stakes to what you’re doing and it concentrates the mind, as they say.

And so, Jean-George, knowing that that first day that that restaurant opened, there are going to be real people there expecting high-quality service and cuisine, that motivated him to get that restaurant as good as possible for opening day. And yet he still continues to improve the restaurant after it had opened. Some deadlines, that’s the way they work. You want it to be as good as possible on opening day or whenever it’s due but you have a chance to improve beyond it.

And part of the wisdom of these organizations, and what I’m sort of trying to help readers discover in the book, is how to take that kind of move, that having what is basically a finished product ready before the actual real final deadline, and that gives you time to improve, revise, make it better. Again, in the magazine world, that’s what I dealt with all the time. Just getting that first draft out of the writer was maybe the most crucial step. And then we have, hopefully, enough time to go through revision after revision and make it better. Obviously, that’s going to be better than the thing that’s completed at the very last minute.

Like the term paper you did in college, that you did an all-nighter for, that was not your best term paper, was it? It was the one that you labored over and gave yourself extra time on because you knew it was super important. And so, recreating that dynamic is sort of what I saw the most effective of these organizations doing. And in the book, I sort of try to point the reader toward ways to build that time into your schedule so you can do the same thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, yes, let’s talk about some of those approaches. I’m thinking about when there are self-imposed deadlines, often they…well, they just don’t have the pull that hundreds of people are showing up at a restaurant has. So, any way we can get some more of that motivational oomph when it’s just something that we made up for ourselves?

Christopher Cox
Yeah, that’s a great question, and I would say that, first, you set up these interim deadlines. Let’s say you’re trying to finish, let’s say, it’s a term paper, why not? A lot of us have had that experience. If you set up a deadline for yourself, say, “A month before it’s due, I want to have the first draft done,” or if it’s a longer work, “I want to have the first chapter done,” then do that. Impose that deadline on yourself.

And there’s good news about those kinds of deadlines. Even fake deadlines, even self-imposed deadlines are effective. They’re not as effective as a deadline where there’s a real penalty imposed upon you or a real audience out there, but they still have an effect. Actually, there’s an experiment that I write about in the book. Daniel Ariely conducted this with his students, he wrote the book Predictably Irrational.

Ariely set up an experiment with his class where he basically had three different experimental groups within it. One group got to choose the deadlines for three papers they would write during the semester; one group all had the same deadline, which is the last day of class; and one group, Ariely imposed evenly spaced deadlines for the three papers throughout the semester.

You probably can guess the outcome. The people who had their papers all due on the last day of class performed the worst. The people who had mandatory deadlines evenly spaced by the professor did the best. But there’s something interesting about the third where they got to choose their own deadlines. Some of that group chose the last day of class. They maybe thought that the more time, the better, they would perform better, they had the most flexibility but they actually did just as badly as the people who had it all on the last day of class by design.

But within the people who got to choose, those who self-imposed evenly spaced deadlines on themselves did just as well as the ones who had mandatory evenly spaced deadlines. So, those were fake deadlines, there was no penalty if they didn’t turn it in on the date that they said, but those deadlines had an effect. They were almost like real deadlines for that class.

So, that’s the good news for those of you out there who are thinking, “Well, I can self-impose deadlines but it won’t make any difference because they won’t be real.” Like, if you believe in them and you set them and you make them concrete, they will have an effect.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. And to that point, it’s interesting that you can sort of deduce some stakes and some relevance to your deadlines as opposed to them being purely arbitrary. Like, I think these students, again I’m speculating, could say, “Okay, if I don’t complete these in an evenly spaced fashion, I’m going to have a brutally miserable few days of my life,” so there’s that. And so, I guess that’s one means of making them real for yourself is by having an understanding, an articulation of just what would happen if I didn’t hit my self-imposed deadline.

Christopher Cox
Yeah, no, exactly. It sort of goes back to the original lesson, which is set a concrete deadline, take deadline seriously is the most basic part of it. And if you’re thoughtful about it, if you’re just deliberate about these things, it’s going to have a big effect on your performance and how good you are at getting things done before the last minute.

So, these students were wise, those who chose evenly spaced deadlines on their own. They sort of planned through what they thought would be most effective and put it into place, and it worked out for them.

Pete Mockaitis
And you were about to say a second piece. Please, lay it on us.
Christopher Cox
So, first, self-imposed deadlines with nothing else going for them will have an effect. But if you can bring in some enforcement mechanisms, if you can bring in that audience, bring in some way to sort of give those self-imposed deadlines teeth, as I call in the book, then you should. And, well, I did it myself.

So, I wrote this book, and it had a deadline, the publisher wanted it on March 1st, and I knew that I needed to make that deadline. It would be completely embarrassing to write a book about deadlines and miss my own deadline. And so, I was very deliberate about it. I had a little bit over a year to write it and to report it, and so I set up a very fleshed out schedule sort of for that year. And I planned what I was going to write each chapter, what I was going to research each chapter, and I hit most of those interim deadlines pretty well, not perfectly, but those interim deadlines were there and they helped me, and I got things done. Some things came in early. Some things came in late but it all worked out in the wash.

But one of the things that I did to help make those interim deadlines more effective was to start promising a chapter to my editor, or promising a chapter to my agent or to my wife. It didn’t matter, it didn’t have to be someone who had actual authority over me or anything. It could be a best friend, and say, “I’m going to finish this chapter about Jean-George and I’m going to send it to you.”

And just that promise, bringing someone else into the process, increasing the interdependence of what is often a very solitary pursuit, writing a book, helped me, helped me get things done on time. And it meant that, by the time March 1st rolled around, and my editor was ready for my book, I was ready to send it to him.

Pete Mockaitis
That’s good. All right. So, anyone will do.

Christopher Cox
Yeah, anyone will do and I think that…well, how to put this best?

Pete Mockaitis
Not to diminish your wife in any way. She’s very special.

Christopher Cox
No, exactly. In fact, I would say promising to my wife, that was the most demanding one. I wanted it to impress her. But, yeah, I would say try to create multiple enforcement mechanisms for yourself. So, if you’re a writer, don’t make it only your wife who sees it too, but also find someone else, who’s an outside party, so you have…it’s sort of like, in a magazine world, like, me thinking, “Oh, I have to meet the demands of the art department and the fact-checking department and the copy editor.” It’s the sort of multiple connections of interdependence that is the most effective at keeping you on target.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I’ll tell you, with the podcasts, having tens and thousands of folks who just sort of expect there’s going to be an episode on Monday and Thursday does wonders for me.

Christopher Cox
Oh, for sure. Having that audience out there, whether you’re doing a podcast or putting a magazine out or putting on a theatrical production, it really concentrates you and keeps you on target.

Pete Mockaitis
And, Christopher, I want to get your take, is there a dark side to deadlines? Is it all benefit or are there some watchouts we should be concerned about?

Christopher Cox
Well, I’ve certainly come to embrace and respect and rely upon deadlines, and I do think that the notion that I find myself pushing back against over and over again, especially when people know that I’ve written this book about deadlines, is that deadlines and creativity are somehow at odds, that we associate it with the task master putting us to work and there’s no room for creativity, and it has to be done by a certain date.

Then what happens if I have a brilliant insight that would only arrive if I gave myself endless time to work on it? But I just don’t think that’s the case. Like, I’ve seen it with the writers, brilliant writers, poets, novelists, all of them, they thrive under a deadline. And I saw the same thing in organizations as different from that as like the Air Force.

Like, I went and embedded in this Air Force unit and they were so deadline-driven and yet they were so focused, but they also seem the most at ease of anyone that I saw because they knew they were dialed in, they knew that they were going to meet their deadlines, and so they didn’t feel any stress. And I compared it to a state of flow, this state of complete concentration that has elements of euphoria to it.

So, I guess I would say that there is a dark side to deadlines but only if you’re not using them effectively. The original deadline effect is a concept in the economic world the tendency to delay things until the last minute. So, if you are negotiating and you have a deadline to finish up your negotiation, the deadline effect is that draw that makes you not settle until the last minute. That’s why settlements are reached on the courthouse steps, it’s that deadline.

But that’s kind of miserable. Procrastinating until the last minute and then rushing something out. And so, that’s the dark side but if you embrace deadlines, and know how to effectively deploy them, you can get rid of all that last minute nonsense and eliminate the painful period of procrastination and just get right into that mode of creative productive work as early as possible, and that is deeply satisfying.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, Christopher, tell me, anything else you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?

Christopher Cox
Well, it’s out on paperback. The book is out on paperback now, and I would love for people to pick it up. But, no, I think you’ve covered quite a lot in a short amount of time.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, cool. All right. Well, could you share now a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?

Christopher Cox
There is a quote attributed to Einstein, which is “Everything should be as simple as possible, but not simpler.” And that, to me, spoke to me in my deadline work. And when I looked into that quote, he did say it but he said something much more long winded about it and it got boiled down into that more pithy version. And that sort of inspired me in a way because it’s sort of he had a brilliant idea, and even he needed an editor to improve it.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And how about a favorite study or experiment or piece of research?

Christopher Cox
Well, I read a lot of different studies for this book but probably the most fun…well, one would be that “Procrastination of Enjoyable Experiences” because it just was so strange to think that people would put off getting themselves a free slice of cake. But there is another one called “Procrastination by Pigeons” and it was part of a whole universe of animal studies that show that animals, too, procrastinate.

There was a rat study where rats tended to prefer a larger shock if they could put it off into the future than a smaller one right now. So, it’s a wild and wonderful world out there when you start to think about deadlines and procrastination, and the way that not just humans have a relationship with time.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, in a way, that’s a really good synopsis of what procrastination does, you’ll get a larger shock if later.

Christopher Cox
Yeah, and we impose that pain upon ourselves over and over again. We don’t learn. And just like rats, we don’t learn.

Pete Mockaitis
And how about a favorite book?

Christopher Cox
Well, one book that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is an old favorite, but that’s Robert Caro’s The Power Broker. It’s a big weighty door stop but he is the master of research and going as deep as you can go on a subject. And I talk about him a little bit in my book as a negative example because he’s been working on his big LBJ project for, I guess, 50 years now, but I want to tell Robert Caro here now, I think what you’re doing is wonderful and I love your book, so forgive me for making fun of you a little bit in my own book.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool, something you use to be awesome at your job?

Christopher Cox
Well, I think I probably will echo a lot of people who talk about sort of shutting off devices and finding time for yourself to be isolated. But here’s a much more mundane one. A while ago, I switched to waking up in the morning to make my coffee, and instead I pre-programmed my coffee every morning so it’s waiting for me when I wake up. And that has done wonders for my morning productivity.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share, that folks tend to really quote back to you frequently?

Christopher Cox
Well, there is a part in the book that we didn’t talk about, but I ended up doing one part of the book undercover, and I got a job at Best Buy, and the deadline in question there was Black Friday. So, I ended up working in Best Buy on Black Friday, and I watched how they completely reformed the way that store works just for that one day to handle the huge increase in crowds.

And I don’t know if Best Buy is often thought of as a model organization, but what I saw there absolutely impressed me. So, whenever I meet someone who’s read the book, they often asked me if I really did work at Best Buy, and I can prove it by talking at length about different fight-screen televisions.

Pete Mockaitis
So, did you confess? When you say undercover, do they know what you’re up to, or you’re just a pure normal employee? “Christopher, I see you have quite the resume in the writing world. What makes you interested in electronics?”

Christopher Cox
Yeah. I had to disguise some of my resume and play up other parts of it. I made a promise to myself that I would not lie to anyone, but I did not tell them, for example, that I was, at that moment, employed by a magazine. So, yeah, I tried to go in through the front door, I went to their PR department and said I want to write about Best Buy, I want to write about Black Friday. They spoke to me for a while and then ended up ghosting me.

And after about a year of trying that, I said, “All right. Well, I’m going to find a different way to tell the story.” And applied for a job, and got one, and worked for a few months just to prepare for that Black Friday. And then, finally, when it was all over, I told everyone I worked with what I was up to, and I changed their names for the books because they weren’t expecting to be written about. It’s a very positive chapter, so I hope that they’re happy with it even though I had to get in through slightly less than direct means.

Pete Mockaitis
I was just thinking about you’ve got your own deadline for the book about deadlines, and you’re like, “Oh, man, I got to shift.”

Christopher Cox
Yeah, that was a problem. It’s time-consuming to hold down a day job at Best Buy while also writing a book but, somehow, I managed to squeeze it all in.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Christopher Cox
The easiest thing to do would be to go to Deadline-Effect.com, and it’s got a bit of everything about the book and about me there.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Christopher Cox
Well, I’ll repeat the first lesson, which is take deadlines seriously. I promise, you probably think you already do, but just be disciplined about it, be deliberate about it in everything you do, and, ultimately, it’s liberating. As your productivity goes up, you become happier, you spend less time feeling that painful procrastination, and you work life will get just that much better.

Pete Mockaitis
All right. Christopher, it’s been a treat. I wish you much luck with all your deadlines.

Christopher Cox
Thank you, Pete. It’s been great to be with you.