He always thought he did some of his best work when he was operating under an impending deadline. He had honed that skill over many years, professionally when deadlines moved and were reset constantly, and personally. He called it brinkmanship, but he knew others no doubt saw it as a potent cocktail of bravado and procrastination. He had long been meaning to tell them how wrong they were, how they were missing the point, but he hadn’t gotten around to it yet.