Ben's 1x1x1 - I love a good deadline - July 9, 2026 🚀
For those of you that are new here, every week I send what I call a 1x1x1.
One thought from my week. One interesting find/tool from my week. One image from my life.
Let’s dive in 👇
Thought from the week
I love a good deadline.
Not the “your taxes are due tomorrow” kind.
The self imposed, line in the sand, this thing is shipping whether I like it or not kind.
Are the deadlines I set completely artificial?
Almost always.
Could I move them at the last minute?
Absolutely.
Will I?
No… because that’s basically cheating. And if you’re cheating against yourself, you’ve got bigger problems than a missed deadline.
So here’s my little deadline system and why I swear by it (if that’s of any interest for your Friday).
The biggest reason I use deadlines is simple:
To make myself accountable to my goals.
That’s it.
Because without a deadline, our brains become world class negotiators.
“I’m not really feeling it today.”
“This could be 8% better if I just work on it for another week.”
“My mom’s in town. I should probably spend the afternoon with her…”
(Which, to be fair, is actually a pretty good excuse.)
The point isn’t that those things are bad.
The point is that there will always be something.
Life doesn’t suddenly clear your calendar and announce:
“Congratulations! You now have 14 uninterrupted hours to work on your startup.”
If you’ve experienced this magical event, please let me know.
When I set a deadline, the conversation is over.
The project ships no matter what.
This past week was a perfect example.
I had a feature launch scheduled for Thursday at 4:00 am EST.
To get it done, that meant early mornings.
6:30 AM with a coffee.
Late nights some days.
10:00 PM closing the laptop.
Trying to squeeze meaningful work in between family, meetings, emails, and remembering I’m supposed to be a functioning adult.
Did everything go perfectly?
Of course not.
Did the feature ship?
Damn right it did.
Thursday morning.
Done.
That’s the win.
Because deadlines don’t just force me to finish.
They protect me from another enemy:
Perfectionism.
Without a deadline, every project feels like it could be “just a little better.”
One more feature.
One more design tweak.
One more rewrite.
One more YouTube video about “How Apple Would’ve Designed This.”
Meanwhile…
The customer is still waiting.
The market is still waiting.
The opportunity is still waiting.
And the feedback you actually need never arrives because nothing ever leaves your laptop.
Shipping beats polishing.
Almost every time.
There’s also something weirdly addictive about deadlines.
They create momentum.
Urgency.
Energy.
It’s like your brain finally realizes:
“Oh… we’re actually doing this.”
When I think about my yearly goals, they rarely fail because I lacked ideas.
They fail because I didn’t execute consistently
It’s amazing how much progress happens when Future You no longer gets to renegotiate with Present You.
So if you’ve been struggling to get projects across the finish line…
If you’re incredible at starting things but somehow own a graveyard of 87 unfinished ideas…
It might be time to roll out the Deadline Playbook.
Your future self will probably complain about it.
But they’ll also have a lot more to show for it.
Find / tool
I started playing with this app called Super Age.
It takes all my health data from my watch as well as my latest blood work and gives me my estimated biological age.
How accurate is it?
I’m not a doctor. I don’t know.
But I’ll tell you one thing… it telling me that my biological age is 26 while my neck is screaming at me because I didn’t have my “right” pillow definitely made my week!
Image from my life
Squad
See you all next week!