Don’t miss the closing date of Chinese Writing Contest!

September 16, the closing date for Chinese Writing Contest 2025, is coming soon.

Don’t miss it!

And it’s in Hong Kong time (GMT + 8) 🤞

I’m that kind of person who welcomes deadlines. I’m pretty sure that, if I do not have a deadline hanging there, I won’t be able to complete anything. For this reason, many times I must set a deadline for myself to push me through.

That is probably why when I first heard of Parkinson’s law — the more time that you give yourself to complete a project, the more time that you will take to complete it — I felt that it was speaking to me directly.

Apparently, I’m not alone. So many people find that the Parkinson’s law resonates with them. It is telling that Cyril Parkinson’s 1955 article in The Economist, where he first presented this idea, has been cited again and again by so countless people. That is actually how I came to know it, through others’ quoting his words. 

I believe that Parkinson was trying to teach us is that having a deadline is a good thing. A string of small deadlines are even better. Not only in work places, it’s also true for students who are teaching themselves Chinese, or for those who are writing a story to enter this Chinese Writing Contest.

The best scenario is that using a series of small deadlines to breakdown a big task into many tiny steps. And meeting each of these deadlines gives us a sense that we’ve done something. 

The opposite side, i.e., procrastination followed by missing the one big deadline, does not give us such a sense of achievement.

There are people who argue that procrastination actually help people produce the best work, because 1) procrastination does not mean that people are staying idle. They’re actually thinking subconsciously about their projects; 2) people perform the best when under pressure. Since people don’t produce anything during procrastination, the last minute is crucial for them to complete their work. That’s enormous pressure which gives them their best performance.

That could be true for a few geniuses if they’re lucky. For most average folks, such as myself, procrastination does not guarantee any last minute success. I have enough such negative experiences under my belt.

Moreover, procrastination could also mean that, when unexpected obstacles happen due to unforeseeable circumstances right before a deadline, you have no time to deal with it. For example, your computer might crash. Your lovely pet might create a mess. A power outage might happen. Or you might have a house guest who just shows up at your door.

Still, that’s not the worst. The worst of all is the feeling of “could have, would have, should have”, that, in the end, something could have happened, yet nothing did.

For all that rambling, all I wanted to say is: Don’t try to complete everything in the last minute. Try good and steady work and witness positive results. 

As September 16 is approaching, I’d like to remind everyone: Don’t wait until the last day to finalise your writing! Don’t wait until the last minute to submit it! 

Enjoy your writing journey!