It's OK to feel alive by missing deadlines

For all those of you dragging your laptops out of their dark grottos this lovely Saturday morning because you have unfinished work you have to deliver by Monday, heed the great intergalactic hitchhiker Douglas Adams' immortal words: 'I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.' In other words - Deadline? Pfft. Deadlines are supposed to instil discipline, sharpen focus and keep civilisation from collapsing into chaos. But, in practice, they are more like speed bumps: designed to slow us down, but to be ignored with a cheerful bounce. The quarterly report, academic paper, the daily column submitted late.... They may arrive after the AGM, conference, edition deadline. But after 'temporal adjustment', they can account for sharper analysis, a livelier thesis, fewer typos, and discovering that taking extra time over some things makes excellent sense. After all, Rome wasn't built in a day; it had more project delays than Faridabad.

Indeed, the whoosh of a missed deadline can be the sound of creativity. Writers, artists, even bureaucrats know that inspiration rarely arrives on schedule. The deadline is a polite suggestion. So, let's please welcome the missed deadline as proof that time is elastic and human endeavour should resist tyranny of the clock. For, sometimes you feel alive only after you've let the deadline go.