The connection between deadlines and journalism is obvious: this column would never have been written without one. But deadlines are critical to every organisation. They are an antidote to procrastination. They deal with the problem of diminishing returns. And they set the rhythm of a workplace, co-ordinating the activities of many teams and individuals.
First, procrastination. The tendency to put things off for no good reason is a fundamental part of the human condition. Hesiod, an ancient Greek poet, warned that idlers were liable never to fill their barns. A paper written about 2,700 years later, by Brenda Nguyen of the University of Lethbridge and her co-authors, finds that things have not changed much since (besides the barns). In a survey of some 22,000 individuals, they find that a disposition to procrastination is associated with lower incomes and reduced employment.
De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
In another paper, Piers Steel of the University of Calgary and his co-authors examined the behaviour of arbitrators in workplace-grievance procedures in Canada. Arbitrators have a lot of control when it comes to writing their decisions: they can, in effect, set their own timetables. They are also expected to act swiftly to settle cases. Arbitrators who scored one standard deviation above the mean for self-reported procrastination took 83 days to write decisions, compared with 26 days for those one standard deviation below the mean.
