Do Deadlines Kill Creativity?
Upon reading this article, I started thinking about how our society is so obsessed with deadlines. I’m in the process of writing my first paper for my 4th year level University class and I am honestly stuck right now constantly thinking about the deadline and thus procrastinating like there’s no tomorrow. This made me connect my thoughts about the whole notion of what “productivity” is. At the heart of a capitalist society, the more one produces, the more economically well off they will be. However, a lot of societies don’t even manufacture material goods anymore (think clothing factories, electronics, cars, etc). We have shifted to a service industry where it’s just a bunch of businesses that serve the customer but do not manufacture the goods. So what is the purpose of the companies that utilize their workers to work on rigid schedules while sitting at their desks all day doing God knows what? I think they should allow their employees the freedom to roam around the city, away from the office in order to fire up their creativity.
I know when I was little, I did not have any conception of what a deadline is and just did what I loved to do. I remember creating the ultimate theme park with my sister in Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 and this was done at the age of 8. I don’t think I can create something like that anymore with all the conditioning that has been done to me about our society bounded on a clockwork schedule.