The power of the deadline

This week’s guest in the Extraordinary Business Book Club is Pam Didner, author of Global Content Marketing: she’s one of those great guests who’s interesting not only because of her experience planning, writing and publishing a business book, but because her area of expertise is intriniscally interesting to anyone involved in putting content out there too. You can hear the full interview here

One thing I particularly enjoyed about this interview was Pam’s refreshingly honest description of how she came to write a book, and the sheer awfulness of the process. 

‘I will do everything, everything possible to delay writing. I am not kidding, because it’s this self-abusing process and you don’t want to get into it right away. Before I write, I say oh, you know what, I probably should do laundry first. Oh, you know what, I probably should vacuum first. Oh, you know what, I probably should make dinner first. There’s a lot of that making excuses in my mind. The way that forces me to write is deadlines. I will take on bunch of deadlines and I will say, yes, I will get that done tomorrow. Or next week. Deadline is a forcing function for me and force me to sit down and write… Even today, I actually have a blog post due like in two days. I was like, oh, I still have 48 hours. Why don’t I do something else instead?’

This may not be you. But if it is, take heart. And get someone to set you a deadline.