Nothing happens until there's a deadline

I have long been under the supposition that most things can be accomplished in a reasonable timeframe. The challenge comes in the determination of what is the reasonable timeframe.

Within the software industry (and many others of course) we suffer from the problem of setting artificial deadlines or worse, trying to build something without a deadline. Mostly these are always broken or missed, simply because there are no real consequences attached to them.

Now if you really want to focus some attention on a project or a topic, sell it, promise it or announce it to someone outside of your own organization. That action alone will create a real and actionable deadline. At that point, as Pam, from 'Escape from Cubicle Nation', writes, Priorities become instantly clear, You get a rush of positive creative energy and your expectations become much more realistic.

This very thing happened to me in the development of my own Web Site. I had been battling with an open source Content Management System for a couple of weeks (it was winning) and getting very frustrated. During this time I received an email from someone who needed to see valid web content in a very short time frame. Wow a deadline! I deleted everything and then rebuilt the entire site in HTML and Javascript in a day. During that day, I felt as if I had been released from gaol. I was able to express the look, feel and layout almost without any issue or challenge.

Looking back on this (and other event's like this), I believe that had I not received a kick in the pants in the form of an information request, and thus a now urgent deadline, I still would have been trying to work with a flawed and unwieldy solution.

Perhaps, it's just better to concentrate on things as you need them (or sell them, or whatever) prior to starting that kind of never ending busy work.