It's natural to dread a deadline. As a magazine editor, Cox spent years overseeing writers and journalists who couldn't meet a deadline to save their lives. He set off to observe nine different organizations as they approached a high-pressure deadline. He discovered that these experts didn’t just meet their big deadlines: they became more focused, productive, and creative in the process. Here Cox shares the strategies these teams used to guarantee success while staying on schedule, and explains how readers can understand the psychological underpinnings of expectations and time, the dynamics of teams and customers, and techniques for using deadlines to make better, more assured decisions. -- adapted from jacket