The Art of Manliness - Improve Your Productivity With the Power of Deadlines

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast now everyone

00:00:11.200 has experienced the way deadlines can act as a double-edged sword on the one hand they force

00:00:15.140 us to get stuff done but on the other they often push us to wait until the last minute to get to

00:00:18.860 work so we do that work in a poorly executed slapdash rush scientists call that ladder dynamic

00:00:23.720 the deadline effect and my guest today has taken a field tested dive and how to manage it so you

00:00:27.880 get the advantages of deadlines without suffering from their downsides his name is christopher cox

00:00:32.100 and he's the author of the deadline effect how to work like it's the last minute before the last

00:00:35.980 minute we begin our conversation with how chris's experience as a magazine editor got him interested

00:00:39.940 in deadlines and what studies have shown as to both their benefits and their pitfalls chris then

00:00:43.860 unpacks ways to harness the former towards greater productivity in both your personal and professional

00:00:47.340 life including creating interim checkpoints knowing how to set reasonable due dates planning right to

00:00:51.740 left rather than left to right and using what he calls soft opens with teeth along the way chris

00:00:56.440 explains these principles using a bunch of real-world case studies from the system a chef uses to open

00:01:00.720 multiple michelin three-star restaurants to how the telluride ski resort gets ready to open for the

00:01:04.920 season we end our conversation with what you start doing today to take advantage of the power of

00:01:08.460 deadlines in your own life after the show's over check out our show notes at aom.is deadline

00:01:12.740 all right chris cox welcome to the show thank you so much for having me so you got a book out called

00:01:32.500 the deadline effect how to work like it's the last minute before the last minute what got you thinking

00:01:37.980 about the power of deadlines i mean it really started with the career that i had for many years

00:01:45.540 before i started writing this book which was in the magazine business and magazines run on deadlines

00:01:51.080 and always have and there's actually one particular problem that i was trying to figure out while i worked

00:01:59.080 at a couple different magazines that that motivated me and the question i had is why is it that

00:02:05.300 every magazine i've ever worked at we never miss a deadline like we always that we've never missed a

00:02:11.000 month if it's a month of magazine we never miss a week if it's a weekly magazine how can that these

00:02:15.740 organizations be so consistent even though you know they have the same problems as any other workplace

00:02:22.140 you know they're lazy people they're confused people they're people who are you know overburdened and

00:02:27.820 yet we consistently meet the monthly deadlines and so that sort of kicked me off that got me looking

00:02:32.740 into it and trying to look into some of the psychology and the social science behind deadlines

00:02:37.060 and eventually they know that that led me to write this book yeah there's a surprising amount of

00:02:41.520 research about deadlines we're going to talk about some of that today but let's talk about the word

00:02:45.540 itself deadline it's pretty kind of a dark word where did it come from and how did we make it be the

00:02:52.680 thing that means like this is the due date it's basically a due date but we say deadline

00:02:55.660 yeah it's it's it's a pretty uh pretty gruesome sounding word and it has a i mean the origin is

00:03:03.080 actually related to death we think that the word originated during the civil war when prisoners of

00:03:09.860 war in the stockade there was a deadline surrounding you know the prison and if a prisoner crossed that

00:03:15.800 line they'd be shot dead and that was the deadline and it sort of traveled its way over to the newspaper

00:03:21.420 business and a similar line on a printed page was called the deadline and if you tried to print

00:03:27.820 something outside that line it wouldn't show up on the paper so that's the line beyond which any text

00:03:31.940 would you know would die metaphorically so you couldn't put words there and then because it was

00:03:36.860 already in the newspaper business it sort of morphed one more time to mean the time that you would have

00:03:43.240 to file a story the time you'd have to print a story and then you know it got adopted beyond that into

00:03:48.060 the wider world so that we all think of due dates as deadlines now interesting so let's talk about in

00:03:53.200 general like the research about the benefits of having a deadline what what do we know and we maybe

00:03:58.380 drill into the specifics as we go on in this conversation sure yeah i mean the first thing to

00:04:04.080 say is simply that deadlines are remarkably effective you may dread them you may think that oh i always blow

00:04:09.600 my deadlines but actually when you dig into the social science and experimental evidence and even

00:04:15.800 real world evidence they work you know they don't always work perfectly and there's ways to tailor

00:04:20.500 them to make them work better but you know the first thing you should do is just embrace the power

00:04:24.700 of the deadline i often say like the very worst deadline you can set for yourself is as soon as

00:04:29.440 possible in fact you should set a concrete deadline maybe down to a specific time for any project that

00:04:34.400 you have and i mean just to name like one quick and very simple experiment some researchers

00:04:40.180 had their students fill out a very long questionnaire and it was a you know not a huge task but it took a

00:04:47.300 little bit of time to fill out this questionnaire and if they finished it they would each student would

00:04:51.600 get five dollars and one one group was given no deadline and the other group was given i believe

00:04:58.140 three weeks to finish it and the group that had the deadline was two and a half times more likely

00:05:06.180 to finish the questionnaire and two and a half times more likely to get five dollars from from doing

00:05:10.260 that so you know very very simple but just you know a little bit of experimental evidence there that

00:05:15.760 like yeah these things work like you know we should we should learn if they work so well we need to learn

00:05:19.780 how to use them effectively we also highlight an example of deadlines being effective and helping us get

00:05:25.520 things done with the u.s census so i think all of we just did that right so we got you get that form in the mail

00:05:31.300 and there's sort of like a deadline but it's like way way far away and what does that ends up happening

00:05:38.400 is it gets in your junk mail pile or like my bill pile and you never do it and so the government has

00:05:44.420 to hire people to go door to door and do the census and that just costs a lot of money and so there's

00:05:51.180 this person at the census who's like maybe we can manipulate some deadlines here to get people

00:05:55.800 to do these things sooner so we don't have to go out knocking on their door can you tell us about

00:06:00.100 about that experiment yeah so this sort of feeds into my overall concept of deadlines which is you

00:06:07.280 know first they're effective and second that you can manipulate them you can you can sort of tweak

00:06:11.280 them to be more effective and so that experiment was done by a census worker and basically you know

00:06:19.880 everyone has gotten the postal questionnaire from the census and if you fill that out it's a lot cheaper

00:06:25.420 for the government than it is if they have to send someone to your door to basically conduct

00:06:29.480 the census face to face and so they want to get as many people as possible to fill out that form but

00:06:34.100 like you said it ends up on the junk pile people ignore it it gets lost whatever or the people think

00:06:39.360 they just have more time to do it and then don't do it the census deadline passes so this experiment by

00:06:43.900 the census worker her name was elizabeth martin was was again very simple she just changed the deadline

00:06:50.240 to be a week earlier for one group so two sets of census forms went out one people had a week

00:06:56.100 less to finish it and the like somewhat counterintuitive result was that the people who got it

00:07:01.100 who had less time to finish it were more likely to send it back so the shorter deadline actually

00:07:06.420 motivated people to get it done and they also found that the quality of the census like the how many

00:07:12.220 questions they answered how thorough they were improved as well okay so i think we all understand

00:07:18.600 that deadlines can be useful we probably all experience our own lives whether we were in school or at work

00:07:22.360 are there downsides to deadlines yeah well i mean the the name of the book is the deadline effect

00:07:29.840 and the deadline effect itself is a social science concept and it's a negative thing when you know

00:07:35.820 economists talk about the deadline effect what they mean is our tendency to delay the work to the last

00:07:41.460 minute so it often comes up in negotiations like between the union or in a corporation for example

00:07:47.140 like those deals usually get struck you know as the clock ticks down to zero and there's a way in

00:07:54.640 which the deadline itself incentivizes people to to delay their work and what i try to argue in the

00:08:01.880 book is like well what if we took the power of the deadline effect you know the deal gets done you know

00:08:06.340 the deal is reached on the courthouse steps but what if we what if we took that power but manipulated it

00:08:14.060 so that people could get things done earlier or more effectively or have more time to revise more

00:08:19.600 all the things you want rather than getting things done at the last minute and so if you're prey to the

00:08:25.120 to the deadline effect the end result ends up usually being worse for all parties than it is if you've like

00:08:30.680 deliberately done your work productively all the way leading up to the deadline so

00:08:35.040 again the book is about how to avoid that scenario gotcha and i think we've all experienced that too

00:08:39.800 i mean if you were in college and you waited till the night before to write your term paper

00:08:45.440 well it's probably a crappier term paper than if you'd started weeks before

00:08:50.600 yeah no it's not going to be as good you're going to have typos you're going to have errors it's going

00:08:54.760 to be not as carefully thought out as it would be if you had worked more deliberately toward that

00:08:59.980 deadline absolutely and as part of this book i had to study a little bit of the psychology of

00:09:05.680 procrastination and one thing that i read was 20 of adults are considered chronic procrastinators that

00:09:13.700 means that they you know procrastinated on basically every project but that number jumps up to 50 when

00:09:19.160 you're in college so we're particularly bad at regulating ourselves when it comes to deadlines when

00:09:23.820 we're in college all right so as you said in your book you're trying to figure out how to get the

00:09:28.320 benefits of the deadline having that hard due date that can be motivating to get something done

00:09:33.260 while mitigating the downside so you're not getting that deadline effect where you just get crappy

00:09:37.560 results because you're trying to rush to hit the deadline so you start off the book with a case

00:09:41.620 study from this chef name i'm gonna get his name right as jean georges vong richten vonger richten

00:09:48.720 pretty close yeah uh jean george vong richten yeah his staff calls him jg which keeps things simple

00:09:54.680 all right i'm gonna call him jg there you go uh jg he's been able to figure out how to use deadlines

00:09:59.220 to open up multiple three-star michelin restaurants which is for those who don't understand like it's

00:10:05.820 hard just to get one restaurant to be a three-star michelin restaurant this guy's done multiple what's

00:10:11.560 the system of deadlines that he's developed to allow him to do this without fail yeah he's got i

00:10:16.920 believe 40 maybe it's more i mean 40 restaurants around the world it was funny when i wrote this chapter

00:10:22.300 i had to keep updating that number because he kept opening up new restaurants but yeah these are high

00:10:27.020 quality restaurants gourmet dining they get all the awards and you know that's a very difficult

00:10:32.960 thing to do opening a restaurant is a very complicated process but he's got a system and

00:10:37.420 it works for him and one of the most important things he does is setting interim deadlines along

00:10:43.880 the way to opening a restaurant so for the case study that i did you know i embedded with his

00:10:48.040 organization and reported on when he opened up two restaurants back to back literally on a tuesday

00:10:54.500 and a wednesday and how he pulled that off and the thing that i saw that was most important to both

00:11:01.540 getting it done on time and getting it done at a high level of quality were these interim deadlines

00:11:07.260 and in the restaurant world and with john george what that meant was he had what he called mock

00:11:13.100 services you know other restaurants do this too but he did it very methodically every single night

00:11:18.400 starting two months before the you know proposed opening date he would start basically trying to run the

00:11:24.340 restaurant as if it was already open and at first that meant that he would serve meals to the staff

00:11:31.020 or you know the chefs and the staff that was there would serve it to the rest of the staff and then

00:11:35.780 they would start dragging in more people so people from his larger organization then eventually they

00:11:41.360 would get the construction companies executives to come in and dine and each of those served as a

00:11:47.320 little interim deadline on the way to that real actual opening date and they got to improve the

00:11:54.040 quality of the dining experience every time and they would tweak and tweak and tweak and learn something

00:11:58.600 from each deadline along the way and it meant that when opening day arrived it wasn't this frenzied rush

00:12:04.800 it was like oh this is just another night in this restaurant that's already kind of been operating for

00:12:09.480 for a couple months now okay so i guess the the takeaway from there on how to use deadlines

00:12:14.320 with while mitigating the deadline effect is have multiple deadlines not just a single deadline but

00:12:19.780 multiple yeah you know these interim deadlines these sort of like checkpoints along the way

00:12:25.940 are very effective and there was an experiment done by dan arieli who wrote the book predictably

00:12:32.820 rational who talks a lot about these sort of things like how to sort of work with our built-in biases

00:12:37.720 so he did an experiment wherein he had his students i'm trying to remember exactly how it worked he had

00:12:44.400 three uh groups of students and they all had to turn in three term papers during a class and one group

00:12:51.200 was given no deadline so they could basically turn in all three papers in the last day of class the other

00:12:56.340 was told to submit them at equal intervals throughout the semester so you know one one third of the way

00:13:03.360 through one two-thirds of the way through and one at the very end and the other got to choose like

00:13:07.880 they could either space them out or they could just put them all in the last day and then he

00:13:13.000 graded all the papers and found something that might not surprise you which is that the people

00:13:18.260 with evenly spaced deadlines did the best the people who waited to the last day of class to turn

00:13:23.080 all three papers did the worst but another interesting finding was that those that got to choose their own

00:13:28.080 deadline if they chose evenly spaced deadlines did as well as the people with the mandatory ones

00:13:35.380 all right multiple deadlines you're going to get a better product and yeah you're just going to get

00:13:40.100 a better product and you're going to be less stressed about it but here's the tricky part i think we've

00:13:43.780 probably if you went to college you probably had some study skills class where they told you you got

00:13:49.300 set multiple deadlines for your term paper you know that logically but and you say okay i'm going to

00:13:53.800 implement this so you start planning things out i'm going to get my final papers due here

00:13:58.640 i'm going to do a deadline here and then another deadline here but then you start working on the

00:14:04.140 thing and you're like man this is going to take this is taking longer than i thought it was going to

00:14:08.220 take basically we discover we're really bad at planning so why are we so bad at planning and then how

00:14:14.460 can you avoid setting deadlines you can't meet yeah we're bad at planning i mean i think it's just a

00:14:21.720 it's another one of those built-in biases that humans have there's a name for it it's called

00:14:26.800 the planning fallacy it is a product of actually our optimism like we always think that we're going

00:14:32.860 to get things done faster and for lower cost than then we actually get them done the classic example of

00:14:38.140 the planning fallacy is the sydney opera house which when it was first designed they had a planned

00:14:44.260 timeline of six years to complete it and a budget of seven million australian dollars and it actually took

00:14:49.680 16 years and cost 102 million dollars wow and so researchers have studied this problem and try to

00:14:56.020 figure out solutions to it and the solution again it's like it's very sort of straightforward but it's

00:15:01.400 amazing how powerful it is and it's simply to think about the last time you did a similar project

00:15:07.800 and try to remember how long that took and that's how you set the timeline for your new project so

00:15:12.820 the last time you wrote a 10-page term paper it took you you know you thought it was going to take you

00:15:17.480 two weeks it took you six weeks okay well if you have to budget your time plan for six weeks for

00:15:22.580 that and just that little nudge that little like bit of deliberate thinking is enough to help you

00:15:29.880 plan effectively it did help you vanquish this planning fallacy well another thing you highlight

00:15:34.760 too they can help vanquish it is instead of planning left to right plan right to left what do you mean by

00:15:41.360 that right so you know this is when you have a situation where basically you don't get to set the

00:15:47.160 deadline but you have a mandatory deadline that you have to meet in the book i talk about two

00:15:52.000 different organizations that have this happen to them regularly one is as airbus the aerospace company

00:15:58.140 they promise a jet uh you know united airlines they have to deliver by that date or they're actually huge

00:16:04.220 penalties and so the way they get around the planning fallacy the way they make sure that they

00:16:10.180 they deliver on time and don't run over like the sydney opera house is they they plan right to left so they

00:16:15.640 they get out their calendar and they know the end date and they work left on the calendar you know

00:16:21.600 they work backwards in time to plan each stage and you know again sort of remembering how long did it

00:16:27.260 take us to do this phase last time all the way back and then use that as their guide for for keeping on

00:16:33.500 target and then the other organization was i went and spent a few weeks with four family farms in

00:16:40.260 northern california and southwestern oregon that provide all the easter lilies that are sold in the

00:16:45.880 united states and canada every year easter lily is a white lily and it really is only bought and sold

00:16:52.200 for easter for the easter weekend and so one of the farmers told me basically the day after easter this

00:16:57.780 crop is useless so they really have to meet that deadline they have to have the lilies ready to ship in

00:17:03.520 time for the holiday and they did the same thing they really carefully planned out their year and

00:17:10.680 knew down to the day like how long each stage of the process would take what you know harvest there's

00:17:15.680 a period when it was the bulbs are stored in a warehouse there's a period when it goes into a

00:17:19.280 greenhouse and they plan backwards from that and that tells them basically when to plant when to

00:17:24.020 harvest and that's how they meet their their deadline year after year yeah i picked up on that

00:17:28.860 right to left planning when i was in law school like getting ready for exams uh you know in law

00:17:34.660 school your entire grade for the semester depends on this one single exam you take it's an essay exam

00:17:39.740 with multiple choice and so what i did is okay i would at the beginning of the semester i'd say okay

00:17:44.400 the the test is this date and then i would schedule out okay i'm going to do a practice test this you

00:17:50.760 know this saturday before and then this saturday before and it was amazing how much that helped

00:17:55.860 and me getting ready for those law school exams yeah no exactly if you if you work the other way

00:18:02.100 you know you're much more likely to spill past the date that you actually need to get it done

00:18:05.740 right so another thing you you argue is to think of deadlines as you know some basically some

00:18:13.060 deadlines not all deadlines but some deadlines as a soft open with teeth what do you mean by that

00:18:18.400 right so you know deadlines no matter what kind they are are effective but you know even if they're

00:18:26.580 self-imposed even if it's just you sitting and thinking to yourself i'm going to get it done by

00:18:30.220 this friday at 5 p.m or whatever that helps but the more you know what i call enforcement mechanisms

00:18:36.080 you can work in the better for you the more likely it is you're actually going to get it done

00:18:39.740 and so a soft deadline with teeth is basically it's a real deadline and that there are some

00:18:46.480 consequences if you if you miss it but it is before the most important deadline the one the sort of do

00:18:52.580 or die date and so the case study i did for that is i went to telluride ski resort in colorado

00:18:57.920 and watched how they opened the mountain for the season and basically that involves spinning up a lot of

00:19:05.120 different uh parts of the organization you know they have to hire lifties people to run the lifts

00:19:09.900 they have to hire ski instructors and then most importantly they have to cover the entire mountain

00:19:15.040 and snow you know a lot of the early season is only possible because of artificial snowmaking

00:19:19.780 and the way that they have made sure that they open successfully is by setting a soft deadline with teeth

00:19:26.460 so in the ski business the first big weekend is the week between christmas and new year's

00:19:32.000 and that's the week you have to have everything up and running full speed if you are going to meet

00:19:37.560 your revenue for the year they have to have that's that's when that's the busiest week of the of the

00:19:42.740 entire ski season so that's the real deadline that's the do or die date for telluride so they decided okay

00:19:48.200 fine well if we want to make sure that we're completely ready by that date when when should we open

00:19:53.140 and for the past you know more than a decade they've opened on thanksgiving and the way they thought

00:20:01.140 it was like that's a real deadline there they're going to be real people skiing on the mountain

00:20:04.700 that day if we announce that we're open those are the teeth but if we miss it or if the experience

00:20:10.120 isn't 100 or whatever we still have several more weeks to to dial things in and and improve the resort

00:20:16.120 before the do or die date of of the christmas holiday how do you think just like regular people

00:20:21.960 can implement this in their work a day life like soft openings with teeth well i mean i i i did a version

00:20:29.200 of this one for my book basically i promised my agent and my wife that i would give them the book

00:20:34.540 about a month before it was due to the publisher and i you know that's not the strongest set of

00:20:42.620 enforcement like my wife would probably forgive me if i missed my deadline but that i had that deadline

00:20:47.680 in mind and i i gave her something on that date you know it's like please read this and it helped keep

00:20:52.940 me sort of on target for my real deadline which is when i had to give it to my publisher we're gonna

00:20:59.180 take a quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show so something you you point

00:21:06.080 out in the book setting deadlines for some projects can be pretty straightforward i'm thinking you know in

00:21:11.380 your business like the magazine business as an editor you had the the final deadline was to print

00:21:18.020 right that was the ultimate deadline you had to get them ship out the the thing but before that

00:21:22.000 there's these other other deadlines there's the layout there's the photography and then there was

00:21:26.600 the copy editing and the editing and the fact checking and then you working with the writer

00:21:31.840 editing their stuff so it's complicated but it can be pretty linear there are some tasks however some

00:21:39.080 projects that aren't as linear like they're complex there's a lot of moving parts that are interacting

00:21:44.080 in unpredictable ways how do you set deadlines for those types of projects well i think there's a few

00:21:51.780 different strategies you can use one is to use those interim deadlines to sort of you know okay

00:21:58.140 i'm planning right to left here's this huge project i know i have to get these 10 things done and just

00:22:03.900 set individual deadlines for each of them the other thing the other i guess bias to be aware aware of

00:22:10.180 is something called the mere urgency effect which is our tendency to prioritize whatever is due next

00:22:18.140 whatever you know has the closest deadline you know that that's fine if you're not overloaded but if you

00:22:23.540 are it means you're going to start doing things that are unnecessary at the expense of those that

00:22:27.080 are much more important and so the the researchers that study this this effect talk about what's called

00:22:33.640 outcome salience so when you think about any part of this project think about okay if i get this done

00:22:39.140 what is what is the outcome going to be like how important is that towards the final end goal that

00:22:45.080 i have and the way that i sort of the case study i attached to this bias that we have was i embedded

00:22:52.060 in a presidential campaign as a long shot presidential candidate for the democratic primary named john

00:22:58.240 delaney great guy let me sort of tag along with him in iowa for for several days and running for

00:23:05.200 president is extremely complicated like there's a million different things you hire staff all over the

00:23:09.120 country but because he was this long shot candidate he actually was very effective i mean he knew that

00:23:16.300 his only chance was to sort of strip down his operation to the essentials and so his goal was to

00:23:25.520 get to the first debate so you had to qualify for the first debate by getting one percent in three

00:23:30.480 different polls which doesn't sound hard but actually if you're sort of someone that people don't know

00:23:35.440 about if you're not you know bernie sanders or joe biden it can be difficult to even get one percent

00:23:39.640 and so he sort of set aside everything else that had to do with campaigning and focused only on this

00:23:46.500 one goal three polls one percent and the way he figured out how to do that was you know forget about

00:23:52.600 you know going to other states in the country i'm going to focus only on iowa because that's where

00:23:57.260 they do the most polling and i'm going to go to every county in iowa and and i bet you if i shake

00:24:02.540 enough hands i could probably get this one percent and three different polls in this one state so he

00:24:07.620 really really prioritized what he was doing and it worked i mean he he got those three polls he was on

00:24:12.860 the first debate stage and that was his best shot you know if he had broken out during that debate

00:24:17.820 then he would have been a viable candidate and he would have made it farther than he did but you know

00:24:23.060 he did not do as well on the debate stage as he wanted to and so he he did not make it too much

00:24:28.440 further well so that's another benefit of deadlines right there when you're facing a project that just

00:24:33.560 seems overwhelming a deadline for him with the deadline was i got to get this many this percentage

00:24:40.060 of poll like one percent poll by this deadline so i can get on the stage for the debate it can add

00:24:45.160 some clarity and give you some focus and you feel less overwhelmed yeah yeah exactly it was sort of

00:24:51.300 like a filter to apply to any question that came across his desk it's like will this get me closer to

00:24:55.820 that goal and if the answer is no then he would you know he would decline that invitation or whatever

00:25:00.340 it was so actually before the dnc the democratic national committee announced that they were going

00:25:07.980 to have this criteria for the for the debate the one percent criterion he was a lot more all over the

00:25:13.680 place he was like he went to you know the south he went to the west coast he went all over the place

00:25:18.200 but as soon as they announced that he's like ah i'm in iowa every day as much as i can be

00:25:22.200 and if he was being led astray by the mere urgency effect he would have kept going to all the different

00:25:27.660 places he's like well that's what you're supposed to do like i'm supposed to they're having this thing

00:25:31.920 in in california now i need to be there yeah but instead he just said no that's it might be urgent

00:25:37.060 but it's not important i got to focus on iowa that's my own as they'll that's the thing is going

00:25:41.100 to give me at least a shot exactly like he told me before that uh those new debate rules were set up

00:25:47.480 his plan was to do a 50 state bus tour and that's exactly the thing that you should not be doing if

00:25:52.440 you're trying to get you know three iowa bowls so he he canceled that and i focused on his ground

00:25:57.100 game in iowa okay so i think the takeaway there if you have an overwhelming project figure out what's

00:26:02.440 like the most like the most important thing the thing is get you closer to your goal and don't get

00:26:07.560 sucked in doing that stuff that you think you're supposed to be doing because it seems like it's

00:26:12.760 urgent or other people are doing it yeah just apply the question of does this get me closer to

00:26:17.660 my final goal uh to basically every task that you you see another case study you looked at on

00:26:23.920 organizations that use deadlines to make things happen is the theater the world of theater and

00:26:30.320 it's very similar as i was reading like this is just like opening a restaurant in a lot of ways

00:26:34.560 yeah you know that there's there is that same sort of like deliberate practice phase i mean in theater

00:26:42.520 it's much more formalized we know the language of it better because you know we everyone's heard of

00:26:46.740 rehearsals and then dress rehearsals and then opening night and all that but yeah looking at theaters i

00:26:52.880 went to the opening of one play at the public theater in new york i sort of saw how much they built in

00:26:59.140 of like a system a very deliberate process to make sure that they hit all their marks that things you

00:27:04.280 know improved at the right pace so that when it was you know opening night that the play would be

00:27:09.960 ready to go on and like you use this to explore this idea of using deadlines to improve what

00:27:16.760 psychologists called sense making or understanding just basically get a better grasp of what's going on

00:27:23.500 in your project yeah exactly so you know one of the all right this is going to sound sarcastic but

00:27:30.800 one of the joys of of researching this book is i got to read all sorts of interesting publications

00:27:36.340 and i read one paper in a publication called administrative science quarterly not a magazine

00:27:42.820 i would normally read and it talked about this idea of sense making and updating so sense making is

00:27:48.400 simply pausing and creating a space and a deliberate time to sort of assess how things are going

00:27:56.800 so in the theater that means at the end of every rehearsal the director gives notes he says all

00:28:03.400 right today you know this scene was working the scene was not here's what was wrong about it that's

00:28:09.240 that's sense making that's you know looking at how your project is going and figuring out what's

00:28:13.720 working and what's not and then updating is simply what you do in response to that it's like okay well

00:28:18.160 if this the scene is acting as it's a little bit slow then let's speed it up or if it needs more

00:28:24.920 energy let's add more energy so and if you in in this article in administrative science quarterly

00:28:30.840 they talked about sense making and updating in the operating room and some surgeons regularly

00:28:39.480 pause even though it's it's very tense and there's a lot of adrenaline flowing in an emergency

00:28:45.560 situation but the surgeons who are able to pause and take stock of the situation see what's going

00:28:54.160 right with the patient see what's going wrong and then update their behavior accordingly are much

00:28:58.680 more successful and have fewer deaths than those who sort of charge ahead and you know either just

00:29:04.380 act purely on instinct the whole time or just don't stop and take stock of the situation regularly

00:29:10.760 something that surprised me with the theater was how close to the deadline the final deadline opening

00:29:18.360 night they were updating things in some cases would be like the night before they like i think i think

00:29:24.200 hello doll you give the example of hello dolly right i think it's one of the all-time greatest you know

00:29:28.820 best-selling broadway musicals and the like the song that's everyone knows hello dolly for it was

00:29:36.140 like written like the week before just a few nights before the play went on yeah i mean that was a show

00:29:41.860 that got updated continually throughout the whole process before it went to broadway and yeah they

00:29:47.400 wrote one of the most famous songs actually it's probably the second most famous song from the from

00:29:51.620 hello dolly the famous is most famous is hello dolly but there's a song called before the parade passes

00:29:56.360 by and they wrote it the night before the performance and at three in the morning the composer was in his

00:30:02.240 hotel room carol channing who was the the actress was there too and the director was there and then

00:30:09.040 they wrote it on the spot or the composer wrote on the spot and they performed it and then they sort

00:30:13.280 of knew they had a hit on their hands right there and and danced around the room saying that's it that's

00:30:18.640 it um and uh yeah i mean like so what does that have to do with sense making and updating it's like

00:30:26.060 they they saw the audience like growing a little bit bored in the middle of the musical and they said

00:30:31.760 okay we need to solve this problem and they stayed up all night solving it and then you know the rest is

00:30:36.820 history it became you know a total smash hit and they wouldn't have figured it out if they didn't

00:30:41.360 have those multiple deadlines those multiple practice runs that had deadlines themselves they

00:30:46.120 wouldn't be able to yeah they wouldn't be able to exactly well i mean you can imagine a scenario in

00:30:49.420 which if theater doesn't didn't work the way that it does you have a lousy performance and if there

00:30:57.420 wasn't this system in place where basically everyone sits around after it and gives notes and and talks

00:31:02.520 about what went right and what went wrong people would just say like oh well that was bad maybe tomorrow

00:31:06.000 better and they don't change anything so because the theater has such a sort of codified system

00:31:14.060 of sense making that's why you know some that play was successful and why so many plays are successful

00:31:20.200 the system creates the success so one of my favorite parts of the book you went undercover

00:31:26.180 with best buy you became an employee at best buy this is sort of like what's her name the nickel

00:31:31.320 the dime lady barbara yeah barbara ehrenreich huge inspiration right so you did this you you got a

00:31:36.580 job uh at best buy but it was the weeks before just black friday what were you hoping to learn about

00:31:43.340 deadlines by working for best buy during black friday well so black friday was the deadline that i was

00:31:50.000 interested in it's like oh this is the biggest sales day of the year for for best buy and for a lot

00:31:53.940 of retailers and it's a pretty dramatic change in business as usual so you know an average day

00:32:02.780 at best buy or at the store you end up working at you know sales are at one tenth of what they are

00:32:09.340 on black friday so how do you how do you prepare for 10 times the number of customers 10 times the

00:32:14.280 number of revenue on a single day and i love barbara ehrenreich and um you know she went to go work for

00:32:21.420 like a home depot type store for her book but at first i tried to go in through the front door i

00:32:26.420 like called best buy and said i want to come look at what you do to prepare but they just you know they

00:32:31.760 didn't really respond and after about a year of waiting and asking i was like all right well i got

00:32:35.600 to try a different way to to report this story and so i applied for a job i applied to work at a store

00:32:42.120 out on long island in new york and i got the job thank goodness and joined the staff i joined the tv

00:32:49.120 department so or the home theater department as we called it and i learned to sell flat screen tvs

00:32:54.060 and speakers and and then got to watch what happened when black friday itself rolled around i had

00:32:58.880 about three weeks on the job before i before i was thrown into the total chaos of not total chaos

00:33:05.160 but the the high stakes situation of uh of black friday and so what do they do i mean what did their

00:33:12.140 process look like leading up to black friday to get ready for it do they have like do they have

00:33:17.680 multiple deadlines i mean do they do the same sort of things we've been talking about yes some of that

00:33:21.840 they have a big sort of dry run so that it's a little bit like a soft deadline with teat so they

00:33:26.020 they gather the whole staff i think it's two weeks before black friday and sort of run through how the day

00:33:31.560 is going to work but the most important thing they do is they sort of they rebuild the store basically

00:33:38.740 to handle to handle this big deadline so normally you know the store is you can freely walk from

00:33:46.720 one part to the other but to handle the crowds on black friday they divide it into sections so

00:33:51.020 computers has its own checkout and its own sort of roped off area and tvs have their own area and

00:33:58.280 appliances and mobile devices and gaming and that's mainly for crowd control like you know to keep people

00:34:04.160 flowing and the things that you see on like the news where people get trampled or the big crowd is

00:34:09.300 crashing to the doors like that's what they're trying to avoid and that's one strategy they use to do that

00:34:14.180 the other thing they did so there's a school of social science that talks about what's called

00:34:20.200 interdependence so it's like how much a store or any organization how much the employees rely up on each

00:34:26.840 other to complete their tasks so best buy normally is what's called had pooled interdependence so

00:34:33.940 basically every employee was working for himself and and or herself and their sales retract separately

00:34:39.940 on black friday and only for black friday they changed that system so that there are no track

00:34:46.140 sales every employee relies on the other employees to complete a sale so it's like basically impossible

00:34:51.180 to sell a tv to someone all the way through uh so you always you have to hand it off from one employee

00:34:58.060 to the next in order to complete the process and so by by increasing interdependence within the store

00:35:03.060 it becomes the whole store becomes more efficient and they have to be efficient on that day or else

00:35:08.340 you know they're not going to get through the day they're not going to serve every customer that

00:35:11.680 wants to wants to buy something uh how was working at best buy and black friday was it was it exhausting

00:35:18.080 it was absolutely exhausting you know best buy controlled the process about as well as they could

00:35:24.140 but you're still dealing with thousands of people and it's it's tough it's a long shift there's no

00:35:29.600 downtime you know you basically are fighting off one customer to serve the other or you know having to say

00:35:35.300 please wait one minute again and again and again to everyone but eventually we made our way all the way

00:35:39.700 through and also like black friday has sort of expanded its reach so that it takes over half a

00:35:46.740 thanksgiving too so when i worked there i i started on thanksgiving afternoon and then worked all the way

00:35:51.580 through about 2 a.m that night and then the next day came in the morning and worked that full black friday

00:35:56.900 and yeah by the end i uh i was ready to to tender my resignation and do they do like an after action report

00:36:04.580 afterwards like here's what went well here's what went bad that we can change for next year

00:36:09.260 they don't do that with the regular employees but the management team does that and then they

00:36:15.600 definitely do it at that sort of uh dry run meeting that comes right before black friday they said okay

00:36:20.860 last year this is what happened last year these were our numbers and though that's one other thing

00:36:24.980 that's worth mentioning about best buying black friday is they set goals for themselves on how much they

00:36:30.660 want to sell and they make them difficult and concrete and there's a lot of evidence that

00:36:35.420 the you know from this field called goal setting theory that those are those are crucial insights

00:36:40.920 to have you you can't just say we want to sell as many tvs as possible you have to say like no we

00:36:45.660 want to sell this number of tvs and then make that target you know a real number but also a little bit

00:36:51.400 of a reach and that is a way to motivate your employees it's a way to sort of meet the goal that you want to

00:36:56.680 reach yeah you see that with jfk and his moonshot right choose to go to the moon in this decade

00:37:01.700 yeah exactly i mean i think when he said that people were probably saying that's impossible

00:37:06.620 that like that's a very tight deadline and yet because he set that deadline i mean they did it

00:37:12.780 in july of 1969 right so they just got it in pretty much under the wire and i think there's something

00:37:17.920 about the audacity of that goal how hard it was that motivated nasa and everyone else to get it done

00:37:24.760 so you in the book talking about a type of deadline that i never heard of but i'm intrigued by it it's

00:37:31.340 called stochastic deadlines what are stochastic deadlines stochastic is just like a fancy economist

00:37:39.020 word for random and so i was reading papers back to the deadline effect the negative version of it i was

00:37:46.040 reading some economic papers and there was one that talked about the effect of a stochastic deadline

00:37:50.760 on the deadline effect so basically if you let's say you have a negotiation if you impose a deadline

00:37:57.480 that's triggered by an event that will happen at a random time the deadline effect basically disappears

00:38:02.820 so what's an example of that well so this economist talked about online auctions like ebay type auctions

00:38:09.500 and if the deadline for the end of the auction was somewhat random like if neither party could know

00:38:17.740 exactly when it would end they were more likely to find the price the final agreed upon price quickly

00:38:24.040 because they knew they couldn't wait to the last minute and so you know what does that have to do

00:38:28.740 with with everyday life well to to talk about that i i went and embedded with unit of the air force

00:38:37.060 i called the 621st contingency response wing and they're basically the disaster preparedness gurus of

00:38:45.220 of the air force they are the the unit that you send in if there's a hurricane or if there's uh an

00:38:50.960 earthquake anywhere in the world and basically their job is first and foremost to arrive and set up an

00:38:59.580 airfield so that relief supplies can start flying in and so that's a hard job that's that's that's um

00:39:05.200 very complicated it could be dangerous but when i was there everyone and i was there right before

00:39:11.960 hurricane hit hurricane florence was was making its way towards the east coast everyone on base was

00:39:16.780 totally relaxed totally chill and i eventually figured out oh these things are connected this is

00:39:23.620 a stochastic deadline this is a random deadline like this we never know when when an earthquake is

00:39:27.860 going to strike you never know exactly when a hurricane is going to develop and so the solution

00:39:32.400 that this this unit of the air force hit upon was to just maintain a like very well defined system

00:39:40.320 of preparedness that they were ready to deploy it at any moment and so that was it i was witnessing

00:39:45.340 you know the deadline effect being vanquished by by this random deadline have you been able to

00:39:50.520 implement stochastic or random deadlines in your own life yeah well i mean i think the lesson that i

00:39:56.100 took away from from that air force unit was basically like to try to remain in this high state of

00:40:02.080 preparedness and productivity consistently so it's not that you know deadlines in my life have become

00:40:08.160 random it's just that if you apply all the lessons of meeting deadlines that i learned from the book

00:40:15.680 and consistently throughout your life then you never feel stressed you never feel crunched you're

00:40:21.400 always on top of things and i mean have you have your deadline setting has it gotten better since you

00:40:27.040 wrote this book i mean you were you were pretty good at it as an editor you had to be but has it gotten

00:40:31.600 better yeah you know i think it was becoming a magazine editor that made me made me good at it i've

00:40:36.540 gotten better by doing this research in college i was as miserable as all the rest of us or almost

00:40:41.320 i was frequently working up until the last minute i think it was working as an editor that really made

00:40:46.580 me appreciate both like the power of the deadline and also um the way you can use systems to force

00:40:52.160 yourself you know to to get things done on time the biggest change for me from reading this book

00:40:58.820 was that insight from the census is that like oh if you set a deadline uncomfortably close if you

00:41:05.180 shorten a deadline you're more likely to finish it and so that actually influenced my deadline for the

00:41:10.020 book i i picked a date that felt just a little bit on the edge of of my comfort when i was going to

00:41:16.260 turn it in and i think that helped me it meant that i couldn't drag things out it meant that i had to

00:41:21.320 like plan the whole thing out very deliberately you know doing that right to left planning and writing a

00:41:27.140 book is a big project but i got it done on time and that is actually fairly rare in the book world so i was

00:41:32.340 i was glad that i had read the research that i had to to make it possible and what do you think

00:41:36.920 someone's listening to this podcast right now was like one thing that you think they can start

00:41:41.600 implementing today where they'll see you know an immediate result with like the how they create or

00:41:46.920 craft their deadlines well if you're setting a deadline for yourself you know again the first step

00:41:52.780 is to make it a concrete deadline don't say as soon as possible you know pick a date pick a time

00:41:56.960 you know you could learn from the planning fallacy and think about the last time you did

00:42:01.340 something that was similar and then sort of working in the opposite direction from that optimism then

00:42:06.540 push the deadline forward you know set it a little bit earlier than you think you might want to

00:42:11.100 and that is simply just that's going to be that nudge that that pushes you into action sooner rather

00:42:16.160 than later well chris this has been a great conversation where can people go to learn more

00:42:19.700 about the book and your work well the book is available from bookstores everywhere or amazon and

00:42:25.380 barnes and noble and uh if they want to check out my website there's more information there

00:42:29.100 that's a deadline effect.com fantastic well chris cox thanks for your time it's been a pleasure

00:42:33.940 thank you brett good to be with you my guest today was christopher cox he's the author of the book

00:42:39.160 the deadline effect it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you find out more

00:42:42.980 information about the book at the website deadline-effect.com also check out our show notes

00:42:47.340 at aom.is deadline where you find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:42:51.540 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at art of manliness.com

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00:43:43.520 you

The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

Improve Your Productivity With the Power of Deadlines

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