Leverage Time Pressure by Setting a Due Date – Tip #17

by Brad Isaac on January 8, 2008

What happens when you are late for a doctors appointment?

Do you rush, ‘white knuckle’ and speed your way to the appointment? Knowing you’ll be charged for the missed appointment, time pressure can be a great motivator.

That is the power of a deadline. It creates a gap that needs to be filled.

You will work harder to be on time to your appointment.

Dates create time pressure for your goal. Therefore, always schedule a completion date for your goals.

This is tip 17 of 101 contained in the 31 day series 101 Goal Setting Breakthroughs: A 31 Day Blog Series That Will Make 2008 Your Best Year Ever! Subscribe to my free RSS feed to get the rest of the series and never miss a tip!

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{ 4 comments }

January 9, 2008 at 8:08 am

I think this depends upon the individual’s personality.

Time dependent goals have a flip-side. In a busy schedule they rarely get done *early*, and the prioritisation of goals doesn’t change flexibly. Whatever is scheduled to be completed to get done today gets done, whether that is still a good idea or not.

Plus, as mentioned in Peopleware many years ago, people under time pressure don’t work better they just work faster.

Rather than time goals I prefer volume goals – keep the number of outstanding tasks under X. You can still fiddle that but at least the prioritisation is dynamic and stuff can get done early.

Brad Isaac January 9, 2008 at 10:07 pm

Neil,

You make a lot of good points, keeping the number of tasks low is a great suggestion.

But I have to say that I disagree about time pressure. Setting a goal with an ink and paper deadline makes it more real. You start to think of how you are going to make it happen. And you picture yourself come June, or July xx having succeeded.

In the workplace, projects with due dates get done – maybe faster, maybe with less attention to detail – but done. I’d say the same is true with goals and steps. Put a date on it and it gets done too.

Ludwig Schubert January 11, 2008 at 8:37 pm

Brad, the idea of deadlines is good!
The problem with them is that when you only set them for you, nobody gets angry at you or anything.
I have often set deadlines for school projects (like: complete this by the end of summer vacation), but since nobody but me cared I quietly shifted the date backwards further and further.

I think for deadlines to really work you need an audience that keeps track of them. (Like your boss or client)

But I don’t want to spam my friends with my personal goals now, do I?

yours,
Ludwig

January 15, 2008 at 5:17 pm

Thanks for the tip, Brad. I agree that it’s a personal preference, but a nice tool. It’s a helpful variation on Parkinson’s law.

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