The Often Overlooked Power Of Leaving Things To The Last Minute

Is it a good idea?

two poker players inside a fishbowl stare at each other while holding their cards, realistic digital art — by DALL·E

Deadlines

The project’s deadline is today at midnight. There is no option for an extension that won’t cost us dearly. We knew the deadline months ago, but the day has come, and we must deliver whatever we can. We often wonder how we got here. We often regret not having worked a little bit harder every other day during the budgeted time instead of having to reach legendary levels of efficiency in the final hours. Why did we leave it until now? More broadly, why do we make so many last-minute decisions?

Dot Com Retro Lessons

Many years ago, someone had the brilliant idea of starting one of the first purely online travel agencies based on the idea of last-minute deals. It was such a powerful concept: instead of making countless decisions before executing our chosen plan, here we would check what was available now and leave tomorrow or a few days later. Granted, some of the pleasure of travelling resides in the planning stage: where we want to go, what is fascinating about each location, where we want to stay, and how many places can we visit before finding our way back home? However, sometimes we just need to go somewhere, and the world has more destinations we would love to visit than the time we have to visit them. The magic of…