I work better with deadlines is something I'm not likely to say – or at least, not say and mean. I should work better with deadlines – it's always a good idea to have a sense of schedule and time – it's never a bad thing to work backwards from a delivery date and break the task at hand into do-able chunks. But the truth is, I don't. I've somehow arrived at the middle part of my life still kind of college-term-papering my way through things – not pulling all-nighters, of course, or doing it all in one painful sprint – but it's a rare project where I don't think, at least once, "what was I doing last week when I should have been doing this?"