How to Adjust the Timing of a Deadline

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i often say like the very worst dead line that you can give yourself is to say, as soon as possible. But if you actually set a concrete date nos goin to get done in a week, that tends to be more effective. And so one of the other things that came up in looking at how adjusting the timing of a dead line can increase your ability to complete a project was i read all these papers on procrastination. It turns out we also tend to procrastinate things that we do want to do.

Christopher Cox discusses how to leverage deadlines to curb procrastination, improve productivity, and deliver better results.

— YOU’LL LEARN —

1) The worst possible deadline you can give yourself

2) The trick restaurateurs and theater artists use to consistently deliver quality

3) The trick to making self-imposed deadlines more motivating

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— ABOUT CHRISTOPHER —

Christopher Cox has written about politics, business, books, and science for The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Harper’s, Wired, and Slate. In 2020, he was named a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT and a visiting scholar at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He was formerly the chief editor of Harper’s Magazine and executive editor of GQ, where he worked on stories that won the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN Literary Award for Journalism, and multiple National Magazine Awards. His book The Deadline Effect is out in paperback now.

• Book: The Deadline Effect: Inside Elite Organizations That Have Mastered the Ticking Clock

• Website: Deadline-Effect.com

— RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE SHOW —

• Research: “More and Less Effective Updating: The Role of Trajectory Management in Making Sense Again” by Marlys Christianson

• Research: Procrastination of Enjoyable Experiences

• Research: "Procrastination by pigeons: preference for larger, more delayed work requirements." by J.E. Mazur

• Book: Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely

• Book: The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro

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