The Deadline Effect

De: Christopher Cox

Narrado por: George Newbern

'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' So said author Douglas Adams - but what if there was a way of making deadlines work for you and using them to ensure others provide you with what you want when you want it?

In Christopher Cox's brilliant new book, he looks at the impact deadlines have on us, and how we can use them to deliver the best results for all parties. Social scientists have revealed that most negotiations run right up to the deadline before a deal is finally struck. What they also discovered was that this deadline effect usually results in a worse deal for both parties. Cox shows you how, instead, the deadline effect can be used to bring about success not failure.

The truth is that most of us think of deadlines all wrong. They aren’t immutable laws of nature; they are a game we can play - and win. This book will show you the strategies different workplaces have come up with to do just that. They are the businesses and individuals who are rehabilitating the deadline effect, taking the urgency it provides and jettisoning all the down-to-the-wire nonsense. Based on his own experience as a magazine commissioning editor, where coaxing writers to deliver on time is an art form, he also embeds himself in other businesses, such as a ski patrol ahead of the first day of the winter season, to see how they meet deadlines that cannot be missed.

Above all, this book is an argument to embrace the power of deadlines. When time is limited, people are less wasteful, more focused, productive and creative. It’s a liberating realisation: excellence and timeliness are not at odds, and the deadline effect can be highly effective.

©2021 Christopher Cox (P)2021 Simon & Schuster, Inc

Reseñas de la Crítica

'The Deadline Effect is filled with case studies that are smart, fun to read, and filled with drama. And most important, there are real lessons here: about how to work more creatively and efficiently, and how the ticking clock of a deadline often pushes us to do our best work.'
(Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power Of Habit and Smarter Faster Better)

'Cox is a zealous proselytiser of "the deadline effect" - the transformative work that happens at the eleventh hour... It's only by mentally manipulating ourselves to act early and often that we can ever do spectacular things... Though Cox may have learned his tricks as a deadline enforcer, he knows better than to preach without practice.' (Rachel Syme)

'Christopher Cox is highly lucid and a quick learner, who also happens to be skilled at explaining big ideas through stories. The examples are wildly various and creative, and each features high stakes: will the Easter lilies be ready to ship on time? Will the new restaurant open on schedule? Will the box store be prepared for the crush of Black Friday? A wry and literate how-to, a counterphobic look at the deadlines we fear yet couldn’t live without.' (Ted Conover, Professor and Director, Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute of NYU)

'In the eternal battle between human beings and the clock, Christopher Cox’s The Deadline Effect offers a compulsively readable truce. In these seven vivid profiles of organisations under extreme stress, The Deadline Effect addresses a common conundrum with unusual insight. They say if you want something done, give it to the busiest person in the office but if you want to know how it gets done, give it to Christopher Cox.'
(Sloane Crosley, author of Look Alive Out There)

Not a lot to learn from the book, intro is enough

Very difficult to finish, this should have been a very short article. The details in the stories do not contribute to a better understanding of how deadlines work. Give shorter deadlines and stick to them, under pressure everyone accomplishes more. There I said it, that was what the author tried to say in 5 hours of audio. Narrator was great though.