Deadlines: We all have them, and we all dread them. Even when we meet them, there’s always another one just around the corner.
But there are ways to stop drowning in deadlines–to stop seeing them as something negative and start embracing them. And making deadlines work for you instead of the other way around is the first step toward managing stress and improving your productivity.
Deadlines can be stressful because we only set one: the date when all work for a project will be complete. A single, end-date deadline for a huge project can lead to procrastination, either because we underestimate how long the project will take to complete or because we’re too overwhelmed by the size of the project to get started.
While there’s not much you can do to combat the stress of unrealistic deadlines set by someone else (aside from pushing back on the deadline by showing why it’s unreasonable), most of the ways that deadlines stress us out can be avoided.
And if you learn how to avoid unnecessarily stressful deadlines, you can start using deadlines to motivate yourself and increase your productivity. If you’re struggling with stress caused by self-imposed deadlines or procrastination, try these techniques that I observe based on my learnings to set deadlines that motivate me.
SET MULTIPLE DEADLINES INSTEAD OF JUST ONE
I happen to read an interesting study conducted by researchers Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch about deadlines and their effectiveness by assigning three proofreading tasks to three distinct test groups:
The first group was assigned a deadline each week for each proofreading task.
The second group was assigned one final deadline for all three tasks.
The third group chose their own deadlines.
The group that was assigned weekly deadlines performed significantly better than the other two groups: They made fewer errors and missed fewer deadlines.
Based on this research, one better way to create less stressful and more realistic deadlines is to break large projects into smaller tasks, setting deadlines for each task instead of just one final deadline.
To use an example from project assignment, “Project submission by May 3” sounds like a monumental task that can freeze you up. But “Collect relevant data/source by April 7; do a pilot testing by April 15; build a rough prototype by April 30” is much more approachable because you have specific and concrete tasks you can tackle.
Once you can clearly see the smaller tasks within the larger project, you’ll have a better chance of organizing your time in a way that makes getting to the finish line simpler and less stressful.
FIND YOUR IDEAL STRESS LEVEL
Here’s a bit of good news: Not all stress is bad. In moderation, stress can motivate us rather than deter us from finishing a project on time.
Developed by psychologists Robert M. Yerkes and John D. Dodson in 1908, the Yerkes-Dodson law states that the more mental arousal there is, the more efficient a person becomes. But after you hit a certain threshold, your performance begins to decrease.
So what are those “perfect” stress levels that can help us not only complete a project on time, but also do so to the best of our ability? Well, it depends on the type of project.
Easier tasks yield the best results when there’s a higher level of stress. By contrast, complex projects don’t benefit from high arousal and suffer the opposite effect. Performance is higher for difficult tasks when the level of arousal is low or moderate.
The next time you set a deadline, try setting a rush deadline for easier tasks and set your deadline far out for more difficult projects. Controlling our levels of stress this way can help us get the best stress levels, and, ultimately, the best results.
TURN MEETING YOUR DEADLINES INTO A GAME
In a TED talk, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discusses “flow.” In order to find your flow state–when you’re so focused that you don’t even notice time passing–you have to be engaged in a task that’s just challenging enough that you find it rewarding, but not so difficult that it diminishes your motivation.
When we’re in the flow state, otherwise known as maximum cognitive efficiency, our brain activity changes. There’s an increase in the oxygenated hemoglobin concentration in our prefrontal cortex. When we’re bored, this decreases.
This relationship means that it’s naturally harder for us to concentrate on a task, pursue a goal, or measure progress on a project when we’re bored because our prefrontal cortex is not cooperating as well as it would when we’re in the flow state.
To combat this, we can apply the gamification principle to tasks we find particularly unattractive. This means that we basically turn a task into a game to make it more fun and motivating. Because deadlines don’t always work when we’re not emotionally involved with the task at hand, finding ways to make it fun can motivate us to complete assignments on time.
It is not the deadline that stresses us, it is our reaction to it.
Aspiring Boffin 