Why Does Eiichiro Oda Work Right Up to the Deadline?

David Senra says Eiichiro Oda works right up to the deadline because that is the only way he feels he has done his best. Unless he keeps working on the story until the last possible moment, he does not feel he has given his maximum effort.

After 12 years of success, he still could not produce stories efficiently. He wished he could work in a systematic, professional manner, finish on time, and have more free time, but his personality would not allow it. He could not stop searching for a better idea merely because the story was good enough. His best ideas come when he sits at his desk, thinks intensely, and makes drawing after drawing until the ideas appear. Drawing itself helps him discover what he wants to say. He rejects the picture of a genius who simply has brilliant ideas while walking down the street. Jerry Seinfeld gave the Harvard Business Review the same rule: if you are efficient, you are doing it the wrong way, and the right way is the hard way. Seinfeld succeeded because he micromanaged every word, every line, every take, every edit, and every casting.

Oda could delegate more, draw less, simplify his plots, create fewer characters, and finish manuscripts earlier. He finds it extraordinarily difficult to accept compromise. The tension between his creative ambition and the physical limits of a human life is the strongest central theme in the biography of Oda.