How Deadlines can Generate Creativity

Do you remember season five, episode two of Sex and the City? Unoriginal Sin depicts Carrie and Charlotte sitting at an absurdly chic coffee spot playing 1/100. In case your Bradshaw education is lacking, 1/100 is a game where you pick who, out of 100 passersby, you’d sleep with. Carrie is uninspired and has concocted a lovely distraction game that accomplishes nothing when her editor strolls by. Expecting her career to end, due to her column that is overdue, she is pleasantly surprised when, instead of a pink slip, she receives a book deal.

Have you noticed that when you time out certain actions, especially creative ones, you hinder the process that you’d naturally follow? For some reason, a deadline only really succeeds in killing the project and extinguishing your motivation. We’ve all procrastinated by watching Youtube videos- I’ve spent hours watching science remakes of the hits of today(The Molecular Shape of You, anyone?), completely avoiding anything with the slightest relevance to my actual studies. However, I think we’re missing something. We all look at our procrastination as a detriment to our work, but can we use that stalling to enrich the work we’re putting off? Maybe a deadline is an opportunity to find flexibility in an area of discomfort. Scrambling to turn in a project or focusing on distractions(1/100, maybe) can turn into a great creative outlet with new boundary-pushing ideas.

Let’s find a way to overcome that deadline slump, and if any of you have tips, please leave them in the comments. Also, to my lovely editor, I’m sorry if this is a little late… I had to binge watch Sex and the City for the tenth time for research.