Christopher Cox’s The Deadline Effect: How to Work Like It’s the Last Minute -- Before the Last Minute discusses how to manage the schedule in advance of a deadline to ensure better outcomes. The author, a writer and editor by trade, is accustomed to deadlines in his work and wanted to find out what the secret of managing them was. In this book, he shares how people in several different industries live with deadlines in their work.
Cox observes industries as different as flower bulb harvesters, a restaurant, a ski resort operator, an assembly line of an airplane, a pitch competition in front of venture capitalists, and big box retail. In each, Cox finds that planning, time management, and execution to strategy all matter to varying degrees. The author also finds that in some instances, fear and anxiety even continue for seasoned veterans who have opened several restaurants, been through several Black Fridays in retail, or have been a part of multiple pitch competitions.
In The Deadline Effect, Cox shares that deadlines do help us perform better and respond more often (particularly to surveys or items that require one to sign up). Deadlines certainly might not help us avoid procrastinating but they will limit the length of one’s procrastination. With better planning and time management, we just may be able to better live with a deadline in the future.
MY RATING - 3.5
