At the Last Minute

This newsletter is a day late. I could tell you it got away from me, which is true, but there's a more useful reason, and it happens to be the whole subject of today's letter.

Let me tell you about the food drive.

For years, I coordinated a Thanksgiving food drive with our DECA club. The first year, I pitched a format nobody liked: hand each participant a grocery bag and a list, and ask them to buy everything on it, enough to feed an entire family. People thought I was out of my mind. We kicked it off on November 1st and ran marketing hard for three weeks.

For most of those three weeks, we collected almost nothing.

I still remember standing in front of our display with three days left. Two grocery bags. That was it. My co-advisor was crushed. The DECA officers looked like they'd wasted a month of their lives. I told them what I'd tell them every year after that: never underestimate the power of procrastination.

Over the next 48 hours, more than a thousand pounds of food came through the door.

People Don't Move Until They Have To

That wasn't luck, and it wasn't a one-time fluke. It happened every single year. And it happens far outside of food drives.

Last month my team ran Facebook ads for a first-time homebuyer webinar. First time we'd done it. We ran the ads for two weeks and watched exactly one person sign up. One. Right up until the day before, when four more registered in the final hours.

Same shape every time. Nothing, nothing, nothing, then a flood right before the buzzer.

Here's what's actually going on: people anchor to the deadline. Not to the day you announce the thing, to the last possible moment they can act on it. The three weeks of lead time weren't wasted, exactly, but they were never going to produce action. The deadline produces the action. The runway just gives people something to ignore until the pressure shows up.

Once you see it, you stop panicking when the response is backloaded. An empty display three days out isn't failure. It's the pattern, right on schedule.

The Trap Hiding in That Lesson

But there's a catch, and it's the reason I'm actually writing this instead of just telling a fun story about grocery bags.

The deadline flood only works when there is a deadline. Thanksgiving is coming whether anyone's ready or not. The webinar has a date on the calendar. That external pressure is what eventually forces the action.

Most of the things that actually matter in your life don't come with one.

I had lunch this week with an insurance agent building his franchise, in the same boat I'm in. We compared notes and it was the same story: make the calls, set the appointments, and then wait, because the deals don't close on your schedule and there's no telling when one lands. It's discouraging. It feels like shouting into a void. But no call, no deal. Ever. The results are backloaded the same way the food drive was, except there's no Thanksgiving forcing the issue. Nobody's coming to make you dial.

That's the real work. Not meeting the deadlines that already exist. Manufacturing tension where none exists, on purpose, for the things whose payoff is months or years away and completely invisible right now. Your health. Your business. The book. The relationships. Nothing external will make you start any of them, and you won't see the flood of results for a long time after you do.

So Set the Deadline. Then Beat It, Or Don't.

Here's where I'll let myself off the hook for being a day late.

Set your deadlines. Meet them when you can. And when you miss one, like I did with this letter, do the thing anyway and be a little late, because a late call still closes deals that an unmade call never will. The point was never the perfect timing. The point was that it got done at all.

Some of us need a looming deadline to spring into action. Fine. Use that. But the deadlines that matter most are the ones nobody's going to set for you, for the results you won't see for years. Those you have to set yourself, today, knowing the display will look empty for a long, discouraging while.

Make the call. Set the appointment. Trust the flood is coming, even when the display is empty.

What have you been waiting on a deadline for that's never going to come with one?

— Ricky