The Ultimate Deadline

Why awareness of death's inevitability may be a good thing.

Photo by Curated Lifestyle for Unsplash+

I’ve been having dreams for several weeks about working for a newspaper, which strikes me as odd since the last time I did that in real life was in 1976. I’m not sure why these dreams are occurring now, but I have my suspicions. The big clue is that in each dream, I’m feeling the pressure of an impending deadline.

I was a newspaperman for three years and working diligently to become one for the preceding ten. The prime directive of the newspaper business then, and probably still, was Make Your Deadline. Deadlines were sacrosanct, for good reason: Getting a newspaper onto the street was a long and complicated process, a series of steps from writing to editing to page design, to typesetting and printing and delivery. Minutes mattered. Missing a deadline on the front end – the responsibility of the lowly reporter – had unpleasant impacts on every other step in the chain. Miss the deadline and your story missed that day’s edition – and you could count on receiving a fierce tongue-lashing guaranteed to augment your vocabulary.

Being conscientious and eager to please, I learned to be deadline-driven. The looming deadline was a powerful incentive to focus all my concentration and write with all deliberate speed. It always worked. Sometimes it worked only too well: I discovered that without an immediate deadline, I tended to dither. Procrastination was always easier than buckling down when the deadline was not dangling overhead like a sword on thin filament.

The Gift of Focus

The power of deadlines to spur me to action called to mind a relevant quotation from Samuel Johnson: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.” Deadlines were equally effective for me.

But I have come not to praise deadlines, nor to bury them, but to make a point about the ultimate deadline, The Big D.

Scientists, philosophers, poets, and many others have noted for millennia that older adults tend to alter their thinking when they get a glimpse of their death just up the road a piece. Some people react to this realization with fear. But my own experience has been a focused attention on what is most important. Like many other commentators over the centuries, I find that considering the end point of my life to be near, no longer in the inconceivable distance but plainly in sight, triggers a reaction akin to the wonderful concentration of the mind that Johnson refers to. It sharpens my focus as effectively as daily deadline pressure once did.

I believe this is a good thing. Some contemporary writers on this topic like to quote Steve Jobs, a brilliant but insufferable egomaniac who uttered some philosophical remarks as his own death was imminent. I prefer to look for insight to old reliables like my hero and role model Mark Twain, who once opined: “Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.”

Cynical though it seems at first glance, Twain’s remark contains (like all the best humor) a nugget of hard truth. Death is the ultimate deadline. You can argue about whether death gives life meaning, but no one disputes that death gives life urgency. With a looming deadline, you are more likely to prioritize the essentials – as you define them – and let go of the inconsequential. You are also more likely to appreciate life and to treat each day as a gift.

Wasting Time

In his essay “On the Shortness of Life,” the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca argues, “It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.” In his view, devoting time to ambition, or worrying about what others think of us, are wasteful. Enjoying life, on the other hand, is not.

For some, the approaching deadline inspires the courage to take risks – the attitude that if death is near anyway, what have I got to lose? Writer and podcaster Tommy Baker notes that for these people, “the pain of regret hurts more than putting ourselves out there. When this happens, we start to trust ourselves and recognize our dreams are worth it. Best of all: we’re worth bring them to life.”

As a deadline-driven individual, I feel the weight of the ultimate deadline as a welcome reminder: It is time to focus attention on what matters most to me. Whatever the number of days still available to me (and I’m hoping for 10 to 20 years’ worth), I need to spend them on the people, the work, and the experiences that bring me joy and give me a sense of fulfillment.

My latest dreams notwithstanding, I haven’t missed a major deadline yet.