10 Deadlines Per Day

Or 20.  The more the better.

Daniel Pink, in his book "When--the Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing", describes research about "uh-oh effect".  When a team forms to work on a project with a deadline, they typically don't get much done until almost exactly halfway to the deadline.  At that point, if they are hopelessly behind or very ineffective they may give up altogether.  But, if they know they have some reasonable chance of success, this midpoint is when they kick it into high gear.

This pattern was true with a wide variety of efforts:  sports, business projects, preparing for a big exam.  It was also true for a variety of project timelines:  2 years, 12 months, 6 months, 1 week, even 30 minutes.  Time after time, groups would tend to get a sense of urgency almost exactly halfway to the deadline and start to produce their best efforts.

Because of the "uh-oh effect", Pink recommends breaking up projects into multiple interim steps, each with very short deadlines, so that you "kick it into high gear" multiple times in the same long project.  Ideally, there are several small deadlines per day that you aim as you move from task to task: 

• "I want to read 1 chapter in the next 30 minutes."  
• "I want to draft a project strategy in the next hour."

I can see a clear connection between Pink's "uh-oh effect" and time management books such as "The Now Habit" by Neil Fiore that recommend working 30 minutes and then taking a 15 or 30 minute break.  This approach probably works best when you have some goal to achieve within these 30 minute chunks of work and you keep looking at your watch or timer multiple times to see how far along you are.  I've been trying to practice this for several weeks now because these kinds of books have a bigger impact on me when I can put the ideas into practice.  It seems to be helping me get through some of the things I've been procrastinating on at work and at home.