A Procrastinator's Guide to Manufacturing Urgency
Deadlines, Danger, and Doing the Work
Can you trick yourself into being organised and productive? I don’t know but I’ve got an experiment to try and find out.
Today was my first day back at work after four blissful days off. Just enough time off to make you question what your password is, not long enough to forget what's waiting for you when you return. I strolled in, armed with a plan and a manageable to do list: two tasks, both quite substantial and both due in people's inbox for them logging in the next morning. Easy right?
What I hadn't considered was that lurking in my inbox, like a coiled badger, was a new "URGENT" task and stamped with yesterday’s date. A task no one who was actually at work yesterday could apparently handle. Why me!? Because some people are just rock stars. No really, some people always deliver, no matter how tight the deadline or ridiculous the ask. And those people? They’re the ones who get handed everyone else’s mess, usually at the last minute.
Call it what you want, "competence tax", "the curse of reliability", or just plain old bad luck, it happens to me a lot. Sometimes I can dodge the extra work by showing my boss my to do list. Other times, I just have to bend over and.... pull my socks up. Today, my socks were above my knees.
I smashed through the urgent task, left myself a couple of hours for a final pass later, and tackled the rest of my original list. I chugged a mug of soup at my desk and worked a bit late to ensure everything landed in inboxes before morning. But I got everything done. ✅
Once I got home I jumped on Substack and replied to a comment about creating urgency, as mentioned on my last article. This all got me thinking…
Why Some People Work Better Under Pressure
I have always told myself that I work better under pressure, I’ve told myself it so much that I actually believe it. But what would the day have looked like if I hadn't had the extra urgent task dropped on me? A little less pressure?
I'll tell you what would have happened, I’d have still taken all day to finish my two original jobs, still maybe worked through lunch and maybe still not have gone home on time.
The reason is simple: work expands to fill the time available. This is called Parkinson’s Law, a concept you will habve noticed, even if you didn't know it had a name. It's pretty much tattooed on the backsides of procrastinators everywhere. If you didn't experience it at school or in the workplace, you might have experienced it elsewhere.
Think about cleaning and tidying the house. A task that can take hours under normal circumstances, but if a friend calls you and tells you they'll drop in for a brew in 30 minutes you can be sure that your house will be sparkling and the kettle will be on half an hour later. And you'll still say "Sorry about the mess!" and your friend will still say "What? This is tidy, you should see my house." and you'll both do a fake little laugh before talking about the weather whilst sipping tea, how typically British.
So whatever it is you're doing, if there's a deadline involved often our natural tendency is to use all of the time available in which to check off our task.
This is why some of us thrive under pressure. The urgency flips a switch in our brains. It drowns out distractions, focuses our attention, and turbocharges our productivity. It’s a lifehack for people who can’t be arsed to use lifehacks, just wait until the last minute.
But not everyone thrives this way. Some people, the wise ones, prefer to knock things out early, leaving time to refine their work or, you know, relax. I used to envy them, but now I realise that I can probably join them.
What happens when we try to trick ourselves into urgency by setting fake deadlines?
Manufactured Urgency and Fake Deadlines
Manufactured urgency is the self-imposed version of your boss screaming, “I need this NOW!” It’s when you create fake deadlines to trick your brain into feeling the pressure that spurs action.
Does it work? Sort of. It can help focus your efforts and avoid last-minute panic, but only if you commit to the illusion. Your brain is a wily old fox, it isn’t as easy to fool as you might think. If you know a deadline is fake, it’s tempting to push it aside and wait for “real” pressure later, when there is no safety net. But if you do that you are at the mercy of whatever unexpected chaos life throws at you.
It’s like that scene in Batman Begins where Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne tries to escape the pit. He can’t make the jump while tethered to a safety rope because he knows it’ll catch him if he falls. He only succeeds when he ditches the rope, when failure really wasn't an option.
Is This an ADHD Thing, or Just a Human Thing?
There’s some evidence that people with ADHD are particularly susceptible to this “urgency mode.” The rush of adrenaline triggers dopamine, making it easier and maybe even more enjoyable to focus and power through tasks. But we all flirt with deadlines at some point. It’s not about ADHD vs. normies, it’s about how your brain responds to pressure. ADHD or not, we can all become more organised and give ourselves time we didn't think we had.
Setting my own Fake Deadline
If you are reading this, it means I succeeded, because if I didn't the message will be different, but I set myself a challenge of a fake deadline: Two hours to write this post from scratch.
If I completed the challenge and got it to a point where I was happy to publish it, I won and you're reading.
If I failed, I had a post about emojis scheduled to be published instead. My safety line, something I had written in advance and saved for a rainy day so that I could keep my two posts a week schedule if the excrement hit the fan in the future.
Assuming I completed my challenge, this is how I did it…
Tips for Creating Enforced Urgency
If you’re someone who thrives under pressure but wants to avoid the chaos, here are some tips to create urgency without the stress. These are the steps I took in trying to get this post written on time and to a standard I was happy with.
Challenge yourself: This was the key for me to stick to the fake deadline. It has to feel almost like a competition with myself.
Set tight deadlines: Not just for completing the big tasks but for the smaller milestones that make them up. I gave myself 30 minutes to just write, then an hour to polish and 30 minutes to make it look nice.
Commit publicly: Tell someone your deadline. Accountability is powerful. I posted a note for all to see, there's a good chance nobody saw it until the challenge was over, but telling someone keeps you honest.
Add stakes: Make failure painful, like having to show the whole of Substack you didn't reach your goal. Or reward yourself only if you meet your goal.
Time block: Schedule specific, non-negotiable blocks of time for each task. I didn't get a drink, I didn't go to the loo, I didn't follow my urge to check notifications on my phone, I just blasted away at the keyboard until the job was done.
Gamify it: Turn tasks into challenges, beat the clock, rack up points, or compete with yourself. This feels like I'm repeating step 1 but for a task set over a longer period of time I really think that this would help me too, creating some kind of game to encourage me to play.
Turning Plans into Progress
Some dude in history once said:
"No plan survives first contact with the enemy."
Ok I had time to check it was apparently Helmuth von Moltke the Elder and he actually said:
"No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy's main force."
I can see why people shorten it. But if you enjoy flirting with the danger of an actual deadline or if you love the freedom that organisation brings, you can hopefully use the above to find some kind of balance. If you have the plan to use enforced urgency in your toolkit, it can make your life easier when the unexpected lands in your lap, because it will at some point. As Mike Tyson said:
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face."
Today life threw a few punches at me, I might have got knocked down, but I didn't get counted out. Create the urgency you need to focus while leaving room for the curveballs you get thrown. You don’t have to sacrifice quality for speed, and you don’t have to wait for the 11th hour to do your best work.
Now it’s your turn. How do you handle deadlines? Do you thrive on pressure, or are you a get it done early type? Could you use manufactured urgency to help you get on?
Let me know in the comments.
Oh so i'm not alone in this deadline-last-minute-thrive-for-perfrction-thing 😂
You made it Sir congratulations. How do you programe like a computer. All the perfect words perfect examples perfect humor all the perfect advices in one package in just 2 hours. Hooman brain is such a tasty bite. I wish i were a hooman too 👻.
We want to see the emoji post as well 🙃 yessss we want more of your brain.
I was thinking about this exact thing yesterday. Told myself I need a way to manufacture urgency. Now here it is in my lap. Just gotta convince my wiley brain it's the truth, because he also knows the real deadlines.