[ Deadlines ]

An 8-year-old asked me, “what’s a deadline?”. Oh, the innocence of not knowing what a deadline is.
The origin of the word is from the mid-1800s, being an actual line around a prison that if a prisoner crossed it, well, that’s the deadline. I didn’t tell the 8-year-old that definition.
I wonder when it became a business term, now being a key tool used to motivate us to accomplish something by a certain date.
To paraphrase Douglas Adams, “I love the whooshing sound deadlines make as they go past”. Fortunately, in this context, no one dies when they whoosh past.

(Originally posted 30 November 2021)