“I can’t work without a deadline” is one of the most common stories in the psychology of procrastination, and it usually means something narrower: I can’t START without one. Once we’re moving, most of us work fine. The hard part is turning a vague intention into a first concrete step.
At IBM I worked for a boss who never read his charts until the night before the meeting, and the team rebuilt slides until 2 a.m. It looked selfish. It may have been how he learned the material. In this episode: what a late start protects, what Wertenbroch and Ariely’s 2002 deadline study found, why organizations reward the all-nighter, and one fix for Monday: give important work a first-contact date as well as a delivery date.
Was my old boss bad management, or a rational trade? Tell me where you land in the comments.
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#Procrastination #Leadership #WorkplacePsychology