I was sixteen when I filed my first story that actually made the page, and nobody cared that I hadn’t slept, or that some part of me wanted five more minutes to make it perfect. The deadline didn’t care how I felt about any of it. It never has.
Lesson #1– the deadline doesn’t care how ready you feel. It only cares whether the thing exists by the time it’s due.
By twenty I was a news editor, which meant I was the one holding other people to that same deadline, at eleven o’clock at night, in a newsroom running on instant coffee and everyone’s nerves.
I learned something that’s stayed with me for decades since: the story that goes out slightly rough beats the story that never goes out at all, every single time, and not one reader the next morning ever complained that a paragraph could have used another polish.
Lesson #2 – “good enough and out the door” is a skill most people in business have never had to build, because nobody’s ever forced them to.
Most of the coaches and business owners I work with have the opposite problem to a newsroom. Nobody’s standing over them at eleven o’clock saying it has to exist by morning, and the post stays a draft for three weeks because of it. The offer stays half-built for three months. The website stays “nearly ready” for the better part of a year, because there’s no deadline making anyone ship it imperfect, and imperfect feels like the one thing worth avoiding at all costs.
Lesson #3 – if nobody’s setting you a deadline, set your own, and hold it exactly as unmovable as a newsroom would.
I still write like there’s a deadline even now nobody’s chasing me for one. Something goes out. Then the next thing does. That’s the whole method, and it’s a duller answer than most people want to hear, but it’s the true one.
Something to try this week:
Pick the task you’ve been perfecting instead of shipping – the post, the offer, the page – and give it a deadline that isn’t negotiable: a day, a time, written down somewhere you’ll actually see it, rather than “sometime this month.” Then send it before you feel ready, because ready was never actually coming.
The story still needs filing, ready or not.
#UnleashYourAwesome