Set a date for yourself on anything that has no outside deadline
- High value
- Evidence B
- Saves time
- Free
- Takes minutes
- Some willpower
In plain words
When someone else set a deadline, 80.6% of students finished by then. Only 38.7% finished within the time they had predicted themselves. When something gets done is almost entirely decided by the deadline and has little to do with your own estimate. So for things with no deadline, set one for yourself and hold yourself to it.
- Cost
-
Free. The hard part is holding yourself to it. If you don't take the day seriously when it comes, it's as if you never set one.
- What you get
-
Among students with an outside deadline, 80.6% finished before it. Only 38.7% finished within the time they had predicted themselves. When something gets done follows the deadline almost exactly, with a correlation of r = 0.82 (the closer this number is to 1, the more closely one follows the other). The relationship with their own predictions was only weak.
- Notes
-
If you tell other people the date you set, it comes closer to a deadline someone else set. To be clear, the research showed that deadlines set by others work. The self-set kind, such as time boxes and the Pomodoro technique, has not been tested directly by anyone, and this is inferred from the above.
- Evidence grade
- B : Supported by research but without a precise number, or based on small or single studies.
- Sources
-
- Buehler, R., Griffin, D., & Ross, M. (1994). Exploring the "planning fallacy": Why people underestimate their task completion times. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 366–381. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.3.366
Mentioned in
Translated from the Chinese original. Original book, section 4, tip 8. Content may be out of date and rules differ by place. When you actually deal with an agency, a doctor or a court, follow what local officials, doctors and lawyers tell you. Disclaimer