Always demand a deadline because it weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. A deadline prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.

Everyone needs deadlines. Even the beavers. They loaf around all summer, but when they are faced with the winter deadline, they work like fury. If we didn’t have deadlines, we’d stagnate.

Without a deadline, the motivation to do a task is small to nonexistent.

Are you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It's no coincidence we call them 'deadlines'.

Today we often use deadlines — real and imaginary — to imprison ourselves.

I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.

I manage by absence. I go to the office two, three days a month, and those are the worst days for me. So the people on my team do what they want, when they want, but the results have to be perfect, crystal perfect. I cannot accept laziness or something that is not intelligent or any type of delay. If we say we will deliver a project on the 20th at 5 PM, on the 20th at 5 PM we shall blow the minds of the people we’re presenting to.

Gentlemen, I’ve done many deals in my lifetime and through that process, I’ve developed a methodology, a way of doing things, a philosophy if you will. Within that philosophy, I have certain beliefs. I believe in artificial deadlines.

Remember: Deadlines, not dreadlines.

So I think the issue starts to come up when you’re not honest with yourself about those distinctions and how you are willing to engage with them. What your limitations are, as well. And you know, how you can correct for them. It's a weird business. It's a weird business, but even at my most bogged down, miserable, you know, even when I'm stretched thin, and I've scheduled one too many things, I have one too many deadlines. I can't, I cannot literally think of anything else I'd rather be doing. Like I literally cannot picture myself doing anything. What on earth would I be doing?

One forges one's style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.

If there’s no deadline, there’s no urgency.

If there’s no urgency, there’s no execution.

I’m one of those artists who, if you’d let me tweak, would probably keep going and going so it comes to the point where sometimes you just have to let go and make the decision, “Okay, that’s it.” That’s always hard, because you always have new ideas and sometimes they might even be changes that aren’t even audible to anybody else but it just might be an arrangement within the piece or an instrument that I’d like to take out, or change the octave or things like that. I like to tweak, so sometimes, yeah, it’s a good thing to have a deadline. You have to deliver and that’s it.

But I don't like working. I do the absolute minimum that is necessary to reach a decision. There are many people who love working. They amass an inordinate amount of information, much more than is necessary to reach a conclusion. And they become attached to certain investments because they know them intimately. I am different. I concentrate on the essentials. When I have to, I work furiously because I am furious that I have to work. When I don't have to, I don't work.