Deadlines

Olga Brajnović

13 years ago

Do you thrive under pressure or crumble at the thought of it? Does your best stuff surface as the deadline approaches or do you need to iterate, day after day to achieve something you’re proud of? Tell us how you work best.

Being a Journalist I had always worked with a deadline in sight. What’s more, usually a daily deadline. Almost every night I had to finish a report, an interview, whatever was my assignment for the day. And it had to be finished at a specific hour. Usually at 22:30 or 23:00. It comes with the job in a daily newspaper. No way to rest. During the day you are out there in the streets, looking for information, checking your sources, then you go to the newsroom to write against the clock to meet the deadline. And then, when you finish, you have the night supposedly to rest. But if your story is polemic, as often occurs, you are too worried about the reaction it will produce the next day to forget about everything and relax. At least I’ve never been able to relax at night after publishing a polemic story.
I really haven’t ever known other way of working but doing it under that constant, stressful, pressure. And now I have difficulties planning my activities with time ahead. I have problems deciding what to do. I’m always waiting until the last moment. I don’t know if I’m better working under the pressure of a deadline, but is what I have done my whole professional life. I want to try now other ways of doing things, but I don’t know how to. I wonder if is too late to re-educate me.

via Daily Prompt: The Heat is On.

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