From my scope of experience, I am aware that everybody dreads deadlines. Regardless of who you are or what position you hold. Trust me, I have had to work with quite a number of professionals and the degree of dreadfulness for deadlines vary. in all, no one looks forward to a deadline.
Our in-house designers took a little time out of their busy schedule to pen the piece and I have found it quite fascinating. Designers actually dread differently. Unlike other professionals, deadlines feel like the second coming of the messiah but with designers, it is a little different. Could it be as a result of their solutions being tied to their creative imaginations and design intuition?
Here is what they had to tell us:
The deadline dread as we call it is the vulnerability or susceptibility to loss of focus and/or composure on approaching deadlines or even major milestones. Most of us have experienced this deadline dread on several projects, panicking at these times would only lead to chaotic decisions that might eventually be detrimental to your team and/or the project.
Staying calm and composed is a skill that allows us to make better judgment and decisions by reviewing and accessing the situation fully and not knee-jerk decisions, every designer and members of a team must possess composure and focus in order to excel at making decisions from the actual assessment of the situation and find solutions to problems. As designers, some of our solutions are tied to our creative imaginations and design intuition and as such, we need to make better decisions on the paths to follow through with a design.
Being scared, worried, or panicked can easily throw off your ability to think in the right direction. The deadline dread is not exclusive to designers as lots of other jobs also require these skills to counter deadline dreads, the ability to stay calm and cool throughout a project timeline.
Staying composed and focused during deadlines are very important skills to master.
Designers are like the body and soul of any product. They design for functionality, aesthetic value, and overall solution that a product should provide. Being saddled with all these responsibilities, it is quite understandable why they dread deadlines differently.
