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November 21, 2025

Deadline Magic

Eleven days and 160 years ago, Captain Henry Wirz was hanged for war crimes. Wirz served as the stockade commander at Andersonville prison at Camp Sumter during the Civil War. Andersonville was cruelly overcrowded. A 15-foot wall surrounded the 1,600-by-800-foot stockade. Although designed to hold 10,000 prisoners, over 26,000 Union soldiers crowded the swampy interior.

The prison became notorious for the line drawn about 19 feet inside the stockade wall. If a prisoner crossed it, Confederate guards had permission from Wirz to shoot them from their roosts on the wall. That line was called the “deadline.”

Yes, the “dead” in “deadline” was literal.

By the 1920s, journalists with a morbid sense of humor hijacked the term to mean the last possible due date for submitting stories. Today, we use deadlines as a means to filter and focus.

Until my thirties, I was an unapologetic procrastinator. Term paper? I’d wait until the night before and pull an all-nighter. Short deadlines force focus. There is simply no way to get the job done without eliminating all the noise. Moving from one deadline to the next has a cost–the stress and tension will eventually take a toll.

It wasn’t until I attempted my first marathon that I truly had to plan my work. I could see no path to finishing without regular training in the preceding months. I put in the work, battled shin splints, and beat my 4-hour goal by 18 minutes. (The shin splints, however, beat me for the next three weeks.) Longer timelines allow for methodical progress and practice without losing your sanity. I believe the path to mastery lies here.

So how do you choose? Short or long deadlines both work. I like Dr. Benjamin Hardy’s observation that “impossible deadlines” force us to strip away what's unnecessary and operate differently. Super short deadlines can’t be achieved with linear planning. It may be practical to set a ten-year goal for a major life change. There are lots of merits to breaking down the goal into milestones and embracing the achievement process. Over time, your results can skew exponentially as your skills grow and your results compound.

Magic happens when you challenge the timeline. Ask: How could I achieve this in three years instead of ten? Or in one?

Sometimes asking a bigger question leads to unconventional answers. That’s where breakthroughs happen.*

One question to ponder in your thinking time: How can I use time to focus my efforts and filter my options?

Make an Impact!
Jay Papasan
​Co-author of The ONE Thing, The Millionaire Real Estate Agent & The Rookie Real Estate Agent

* It’s also how puppies get adopted. Check out this week's podcast to hear about how Wendy and I moved up the deadline on getting a second dog.

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