I suppose the overwhelming stress brought on by the frantic activities in meeting deadlines is only marginally preferable to being shot. Well, to say that I loathe deadlines would be an understatement. I may well be in a minority because I know of many people who not only thrive on them but also cannot do without deadlines.
Don't get me wrong, I believe deadlines are absolutely necessary but just because I follow them (and for all the vitriol against it, I actually do) does not mean I have to like them. Alarm clocks are necessary, so are examinations and sometimes so are injections from the doctor. You get the point. I'm sure it has its uses and is immensely helpful in combating procrastination, in prioritizing tasks and boosting productivity and in doing any other clichéd, bog standard management textbook task that you can think of.
For the most part I often see deadlines as stifling creativity, creating undue stress and just being another tool to beat the already oppressed worker with. That is even without mentioning the fact that it is used by bosses to have a little schadenfreude with, at the employee's expense.
What was once the preserve of editors and newsrooms is now omnipresent, finding its way into most aspects of our lives from college assignments to applying for jobs, scholarships, paying bills and other more mundane activities. I suppose different countries have different ways of dealing with and interpreting deadlines.
We in Nepal are no strangers to the word even if the majority of us seem somewhat indifferent to it. We have a certain kinship of sorts with the rest of the world on deadlines of a universal nature; the self-imposed motivational deadlines that are supposed to help us lose weight by a certain date or to start studying for our exams within a timeframe. There is also the more commonplace use of the deadline we are familiar with – to make threats. Like the rest of the world we are not averse to throwing around deadlines to make our threats seem ominous and foreboding and warning people of the consequences.
Besides that shared association, we also have our very own homegrown, organic and inimitable ways to deal with our 'lakshman rekhas'. Trust us to come up with hilarious ways to interpret, avoid, ignore or twist deadlines according to our convenience and mercifully (for me) make them lose their relevance and purpose entirely. For instance we have flexible deadlines. You would have witnessed them unless you've been living under a rock these past few years. I refer to the repeated farcical attempts by our politicians to either forge consensus according to a deadline or to promulgate a constitution according to the deadline or basically accomplish anything on a deadline.
As one politician succinctly put it, 'Do not panic. Another deadline will come along. One deadline goes, another will come and this time we will be ready'. And while the government deadlines may be malleable we have a cultural deadline that is nonnegotiable and is something all of us of a certain age are familiar with. It is nature's deadline a.k.a. the justification used by your parents to propagate a false sense of urgency and get you hitched without any further delay.
The marriage deadline is usually complemented by emotional blackmail and collective scaremongering with the latter being accomplished by throwing everything at you – the opinions of your cousins, aunts, uncles and the kitchen sink! I've often heard people offer solace – to those who complain of getting old – by saying that forty is the new thirty. Apparently that's supposed to make you feel better. Well, you'd better not venture into Nepal any time soon. Here, thirty is the new fifty!
On the other end of the spectrum we also have deadline apathy – as anyone familiar with a passing encounter with any government office will tell you. It is exemplified by the indifference of our government officials to the time, troubles and responsibilities of a service seeker. In the parallel universe that is government officialdom, deadlines do not exist. I've also recently witnessed the rise of a new deadline as if the ones we had weren't enough – the literal deadline. There are notifications on social media exhorting me to do something like visit the '20 places to see in Nepal before you die'. We've even managed to put a deadline on something that is supposed to be fun.
I may be overstating it when I say this phenomenon is starting to become as inescapable as death and taxes. Unfortunately for me, it is in most cases a completely justified and a necessary evil; unless you possess the single mindedness and discipline of a worker bee which most of us do not. For all of you faced with this predicament in your daily lives, worry not. This phenomenon has spawned an entire industry with many books, videos, blogs and the like dedicated to helping you out with your deadlines. As for me, I'm going to concentrate on finishing this article. After all, I've got a deadline to keep.
gunjan.u@gmail.com
Related story
