Finishing JIT

I having been working on a short (10-page) paper on Post Cold War Canadian Defence Policy since last Thursday. I must have spend atleast 20 hours working on it already. And for the last two days I have been fairly diligent as well, mostly focussing on the paper instead of reading unrelated news articles I come across during my search or chatting with/Dbabbing/emailing others as is my wont. And yet the paper is not complete. It will hopefully be done today or tomorrow. Despite my extensive efforts, it does not seem to be much better than something I would have turned out had I begun 24 or 36 hours before the deadline. I find it a bit strange, though of course the logical conclusion is that the fairly pedestrian work I usually turn out is not because of working under time constraints, but simply an expression of my abilities. I have only been truly satisfied with two pieces of academic work I have done in 2006 - one was completed after considerable efforts by me and Kammo, the other was something with which I was lucky enough to quickly find all the information I wanted. Both were done in less than 24 hours, if I remember correctly.

Another thing I have noticed is that if I get more time to do something, I somehow manage to waste enough time to ensure that it only gets done not too long before the deadline. This leads to me think that it is better to begin late anyway, since I am not losing out much on quality and gaining much by being able to do something else in the freed up time. This concept has now become so pervasive for me (and for most other WIMWIans I know) that often I don't even try to begin something sooner (this paper is a special case), since I know that it will somehow be done at the end to the satisfaction of the teacher. So why bother from before!

I guess that Just In Time is not a bad philosophy!