DEADlines

After a small tweet from Jonno and a quick reply from me, it got me thinking about deadlines.

Deadlines to me are the devil’s work (and I’m an atheist), they really don’t help when you want to create something truly amazing. Deadlines are exactly what they say they are, DEAD.

Over at BakedCode we never mention deadlines and would never support giving a deadline because at the end of the day they are a creative drain. We see deadlines as merely a way to make your freelancers or staff produce poop work in order to please pay-day.

Fling those deadlines away and watch how motivated and productive your staff can be. A good designer will relish in the situation of no deadlines, it gives them the ability to do multiple designs and explore the waters of perfection.

Without deadlines you bring something spectacular to the table - trust. Trust empowers people to no end, just like giving people no limit on their “Lunch Hour” does. People enjoy freedom and the right kind of people repay that freedom with fabulous work and even better service to your company as a whole.

When I ask our freelancers how a project is coming along, I’m perfectly fine with hearing something along the lines of “I’ve not worked on it in a few days” as that is simply a statement of good decisions. Allowing people to take a break from a project can have incredible affects on the outcome. I myself will take a break from Interstate and work on our other products or some personal projects in order to get my creative juices flowing for Interstate again.

I’ve worked at a place where we had to use our own lunch hour in order too cash our payment cheques. Considering that city centre’s get pretty busy at lunch this usually meant we went without lunch in order to get back too work in time. That to me is an obvious flaw in the running of the company however we would get in trouble for being about 10 minutes late. Over time more and more deadlines were put in place and a more structured environment showed it’s face. By the end of 12 months I was truly disgusted at the place and thankfully they fired me before I walked out, which was quickly followed by Simon walking out too.

No deadlines isn’t for everyone though, many people require deadlines in order to feel they’re making progress or are pleasing the powers that be. If you still feel you require deadlines then they are the people for you. Be sure to avoid the deadline haters (such as me) because we create sub-standard work and generally our heart isn’t in it.

I understand that certain things have to be completed by a certain date (deadlines) but it’s up to management in this case to plan out tasks appropriately. Just make sure you give your team enough time to get anything done and they may surprise you by doing the work earlier than you expected.

Evidence of this was when a client required a video streaming page designed and they agreed not to disclose any deadline I needed to follow. Within a period of 24 days I had designed the streaming page and recoded every single page on their site to follow an improved design which was meant to be done later on in the year. If I had been given a deadline I would have likely of put the work off till the last minute since it would have simply dragged me down.

At BakedCode we are aiming to avoid any deadlines on our staff, we will be looking for trustworthy, motivated and fun-loving people to join our team in the near future. Want to be part of it? Strive for freedom of creativity? Shoot us an email with some work samples!