
Joshua Hernandez
November 18, 2021
Deadlines are a writer’s best friend and worst enemy.
Deadlines are the secret weapon which creative collaborators and editors use to rein in writers when they get lost in the weeds.
As Gregg Sulzer said on his YouTube channel, they provide structure and a sense of urgency to projects, and they give editors ample time to comb through their given assignments and make sure they can make changes if necessary.
However, depending on the writer, deadlines can also induce stress to a point where they are no longer conducive to productivity.
Gregory Caremans from the YouTube channel Brain Academy explains that because deadlines are designed to stress people out, they can kill brain cells in our hippocampus.
To avoid this issue, writers need to manage their stress by staying focused on the task at hand and avoid procrastination at all costs.
There are many ways to do this, as Bernd Geropp outlines in his video on the subject. In the case of writing, it is best to commit to what you can do and try not to be perfect in your writing. The purpose of a deadline is to get work out efficiently, not to overwork or paralyze the writer.