5.05 · Why Deadlines Work

Why Deadlines Work

“I’ll start tomorrow.” Most of us have said it, and most of us were going to start last week, too. In 1955, the British writer Cyril Northcote Parkinson joked that work expands to fill the time available for it. Give yourself a week for a job that needs three hours, and you will probably use the whole week.

Research suggests that several deadlines work better than one, even when we set them ourselves. In 2002, the psychologists Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch asked sixty students at MIT to proofread three texts in three weeks. One group had to hand in a text every week. A second group chose its own deadlines. A third group had to hand in everything at the end. The weekly group found the most mistakes, the group with its own deadlines came second, and the end-deadline group found the fewest.

The lesson is practical: if nobody gives you a deadline, set one. Most people underestimate how long a big job takes, so divide it into parts and set a deadline for each part. Then you will not put it all off until the last night. You can get down to the first part today, and take a break when it’s done. This time next week, you could be making progress instead of making plans.