The Last Minute


"If it weren't for the last minute, I'd get nothing done."

Those are words I live by, though they're not my own. They were written years ago by my amazing (now gone) oldest brother.

When I think back on my best projects, products, presentations they've all been the result of the last minute. It's not to say I'm a procrastinator, disorganized, or don't plan. I just know that, without that last minute, I'd never reach done (or as some people call it "done-done".)

Lin-Manuel Miranda once described his own creative process - intentionally taking time away from what he's working on, giving himself time to daydream, to do anything but the thing he's supposed to be doing. It's part of the process. It gives the idea room to breathe, to germinate and grow and become something it never could be if it were constrained by your constant attention.

None of this is to say planning, preparation and pre-work are a waste of time. You need to be the expert on your own material - but when it comes time to selling it, that last minute can be very informative. Its where you alter, adapt, adjust and remain agile.

If I were to ascribe my process to a recipe it would be:

  1. Early on, formulate a few rough ideas that may excite you.
  2. Still early on, pick the one that feels the best. Your "darling". Polish it. John Lennon shared his song-lyrics writing trick to George Harrison: write all the lyrics in full, while you're feeling what you're feeling. If you come back to it later, that feeling will be lost, and the song won't feel complete. Get it done fully.
  3. Once you have that fully formed idea, leave it. Stop thinking about it. Walk away. Move on to other things.
  4. After enough time away ("enough" time to where you feel like you've been procrastinating, and you're almost feeling behind) Come back to the darling idea and stress test it. If there's data you can leverage, get as much data as you can. Ask yourself whether that original idea was simply an infatuation? Really challenge yourself to look for its failures by remembering that love is blind.
  5. Leave the idea once more. Not for a lot longer since we're running out of time - but just enough to harness a sense of urgency. This will dial up your scrutiny, so you don't waste time on bad ideas.
  6. Now, with less time, solve the original problem once more with a different solution. Re-think, re-frame, re-imagine.
  7. Take the new solution and compare to your original. What are the overlaps, where do they differ. Which would you pick if you had to decide *today*? 
  8. Now, wait for the last minute ("last minute" really being the final stretch of time you have to finalize the idea and properly package it) while observing unrelated things: things you admire, things you hate, things that are going well, things that make you go wow. For me this always serves as a nice "reset" where, in thinking about my own tastes and passions, I'll ensure there's a certain authenticity to what I'm doing. Get to the heart of "why does this matter to me, and specifically me?"
  9. And finally in that last minute, observe how things are today and compare them to how they were when you began. This is about spotting trends. Have things changed, shifted, evolved? Have you learned more? Has energy increased or subsided? Does the problem require a different solution, or are there more details that refine your solution? Have original assumptions been validated or disproven? How have things trended? In this last minute, you may come up with a third idea that is completely different from the prior two. Don't shy away from that - even if it means producing something that's less polished. It could be that your last-minute idea solves for problems your previous 2 ideas failed to solve. The only caution is that you need to (rapidly) apply the same scrutiny, learnings and refinements to this third idea. Don't fall into the trap of thinking the idea is better simply because it's new.
  10. Finally, leverage this entire process as proof of the authenticity of your approach. It wasn't just an idea you just ran with, nor a desperate idea that came to you in the last minute. It was an idea that evolved through the space that comes with asking yourself "Why."

I'm not making the case that you leave everything until the last minute - but rather that you fully leverage everything the last minute provides.

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