Opinion The Third Edit: Bad news for serial procrastinators: It’s not better late than never

There are two kinds of people who have only a passing acquaintance with deadlines. For the perfectionists, there’s never enough time to get it right — they tweak and add — and that can be particularly trying for those waiting just to get home to a beer and binge-watching session. Then there are procrastinators. There are many sub-categories to this lot, from those who deal with pressure by avoiding it and the ones who find distractions too hard to resist, to people who have learnt that it’s enough to do just enough at the last minute and sneak past the finish line. As it turns out, it’s the last of these categories that has got it right.

According to a report in Organisational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, it’s better to hand in passable work on time than strive for perfection and missing the deadline. The study surveyed managers, HR personnel and others and found that they evaluated tasks completed on time more favourably than the same or better quality work given in late. For the perfectionists, the lesson is this: Don’t let the pursuit of the great be an enemy of the good. For the distracted — don’t be, at least till the task is done. And for those who do just enough — well, there’s a reason for the Goldilocks tale. They have found the happy middle.

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There is another category that has few lessons to learn and little solace to take from the study. They are, in the words of Douglas Adams, people who “love the whooshing noise” deadlines make as “they go by”. These existential savants know the futility of artificial timelines, imposed by the institutional machine that believes that workplace rules are as immutable as physical laws. But since everyone needs a paycheck, they might have to fall in line.