Proper Deadlines

We have a love/hate relationship with deadlines.

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the available time. For example, if you schedule a 60-minute meeting, you’ll talk for 60 minutes, even if 15 would have been enough.

So common-sense efficiency dictates scheduling the meeting for 15 minutes. You should start doing that, by the way.

The same can be true for schedules. If you give someone a week to finish a half-day task, they will take the full week. Are they working on it the whole time? Of course not. They probably started 4 hours before it was due.

So should you have put today as the deadline rather than next week?

A deadline helps. It puts a box around it. It takes away one of the variables. It says, “here’s where we need this.”

But also, it can cause panic, shoddy work, and demotivation. I’m not gonna get it done, so what’s the point?

That’s the deadline paradox.

The proper deadline walks that line. And “proper” has little to do with reality.

Proper deadlines do not have to correspond with or be described as realistic, nor do they have to build in the proper time for this, that, and the other thing that also needs to get done. Proper deadlines are not comfortable.

Proper deadlines motivate. It’s that simple.