I have said this before, and I'm sure that I'll say it again, but modern life is a race. And not always a fun one.
We're always racing somewhere, or through something. We race out of the house in the morning, and we race through our work, or through our lunch, and to our next appointment, and we race to pick up the kids on time, and there's always a clock ticking somewhere in the background.... We measure success by how many times we don't get beaten by Kipling's "unforgiving minute." And that's really not a good way to live.
Or, to work. I was sitting in my office the other morning, working on a project, and my boss stops by and says she needs it by 3:30. Today.
I'm not sure if this is good or not. OK, I have the material ready to collate and condense down to the short articles, but I've barely started on the actual writing. And now I've got to race the clock.
Deadlines are races that we can never truly win. At best, we break even. After all, the clock doesn't take a lunch break, or a pit stop, and it doesn't stop to chat with the colleague in the next office.... And then there are all of the niggling little interruptions that dot the day: How would you edit this sentence? Should I use "well" or "good" here? Do you know the Dibbles' first names?
It's not that any of that suff is bad, or inappropriate, or even difficult to answer; it's just that it piles up, and suddenly it's 2:45, and the articles are still only half-done....
That's when the office door gets shut, and the serious race against the deadline begins. At 3:40, I emailed the work to my supervisor. The extra 10 minutes weren't a problem, which is where people have an advantage over clocks: we're flexible.
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