Deadlines, Expectations, Jazz, and Slack.

The talk of deadlines and expectations in Gary's class has led to some significant personal reflection. I figured I'd better post some of it in my Blog. This applies to both my general coursework and to my ARP - so I'm going to cross post this in both blogs. Later - I hope to elaborate on the correlation between my optional book for Gary's class (see title below), the book SLACK (currently reading that for ARP lit-review), the discussion of deadlines/expectations, etc. For now, I only mention that correlation briefly at the end of this blog - to remind myself of what I want to reflect on later.

I've always been (or identified myself anyway) as a rather "goal oriented" ("Type A") personality; the "perform well under pressure" type. As such - I never much minded deadlines and, in fact, I used them as sort of a litmus test for my own proficiency. I'm the girl that generally shows up on time for every meeting, always tries to leave in plenty of time to get to where she's going, HATES missing the previews at the cinema or the pre-concert discussion at the symphony, etc. The really annoying type. :)

The idea of no pre-set (pre-stated) deadlines (or of soft/flexible deadlines) was a bit disconcerting for me at first (to say the least). However, as I work with it, I find it liberating in many ways. Rather than focus on a due date and the limit of what I think I can accomplish within a pre-specified amount of time, I find that I focus more on what I'm learning, accomplishing, and struggling with at any given moment. I don't watch the clock or the calendar, I watch the (forgive me) process. The work becomes about the work and not about the time. I find that I like this approach so much that I'm trying to incorporate into other parts of my life. Ironically, I find that I generally work faster w/o a hard deadline. Possibly as a byproduct of the corporate world (can anyone say "efficiency"?), if I am given a hard deadline, I tend to plan everything around that timeline so that I don't finish too soon or too late. Without a deadline, I find that I work until I feel I am done (or done w/ a stage). I also get more excited and deeply involved in the work that I do for the sake of the work and not for the sake of meeting a specific date or specific set of pre-defined expectations. When I observe this tendency from outside myself, I find that I've always worked that way on personal projects (art work, costume design and creation, creative writing, DIY projects, pleasure reading, hiking, etc.).

My new challenge is - how do I bring this practice into my professional life while still remaining accountable for someone else’s timeline? How do I approach work that has a pre-defined due date (and list of expectations/criteria) with the same open attitude and attention to the process? This is something I will continue to contemplate throughout my ARP work, as it may have a significant impact on both team-communication and team-project management (which are central to my ARP).
Currently, I'm reading Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency. Concurrently, I'm reading Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation. The correlation between these two books, my current ARP questions, and this discussion of deadlines/expectations is stronger than I might have imagined when I picked up these two books.