How to make deadlines a source of motivation rather than stress?
Ira Veles, editor of Laba
Deadlines are a source of mixed feelings for many people: on the one hand, they cause stress, and on the other, they motivate us to act.
The term dates back to the American. Also Civil War – at that time, it meant a designated boundary of a prisoner of war camp, crossing which threatened to kill the prisoners. 200 years later, the term migrated to business vocabulary and acquired its current meaning of a deadline for completing a task. Now, crossing it no longer has such radical consequences, but according to psychologists, its mere . Alsopresence can negatively affect our state.
We talk about how to set deadlines that won’t cause stress but will help you achieve your goals in our article.
Scientists Say: The Benefits of Deadlines
A team of researchers from Tel Aviv University. Also found that tasks with clear time frames and priorities are more likely to be implemented and performed better. The researchers have put forward two hypotheses as to why this is the case:
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Setting a deadline helps avoid the “blank slate” effect qatar mobile phone numbers database and visible progress motivates you not to give up and see things through to the end.
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The closer you get to the deadline, the easier it is to fight off the temptations of procrastination. Considering that 20% of people identify as chronic procrastinators, this is a very useful “kick in the neck.”
In 2002, psychologists Dan Ariely and Klaus. Also Wertenbroch decided to test how effective deadlines really are and whether they help. Also college students overcome procrastination. The researchers gave participants three papers to . Alsowrite and divided them into three groups, each of which received different guidelines for deadlines.
The first group had to submit all assignments by . Alsothe end of the semester, the second group was given a schedule in which each assignment had a separate deadline, and the third group could set their own deadlines . Alsowithin the semester.
The group that had deadlines set in advance did best. The group. Also that set their own deadlines, as well as the group that only had a final deadline, showed similar results: high levels of procrastination and
turning in work just before or after the deadline.
After some time, the researchers repeated the study. This time, participants were offered money to edit papers supposedly written by foreign students.
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The conditions of the experiment . Alsowere very similar to the first part of the experiment: the first group had complete freedom in. Also setting deadlines, the second – a strict schedule, and the third – the ability to set their own deadlines. The motivation in this experiment was money: students were paid for their work, and if they did not meet the deadlines, they received a “ticket”.
The result of the second experiment was identical to the first – participants who worked to their deadlines completed their tasks better and on time – ultimately earning more money.
The National Science Foundation in. Also the United States conducted a similar experiment in 2015, eliminating deadlines for. Also submitting grant applications. The foundation team assumed that this would reduce stress levels for participants, and that the spreading out of the application process would relieve their team. The effect was surprising: the number of applications submitted this year dropped by 59%. The lack of deadlines meant that many scientists lacked the motivation to
submit applications
Social psychologist Nira Lieberman. Also believes that the motivating power of deadlines has to do with so-called goal gradients:. Also The closer you are to completing a task, the greater the return on your effort.
Dr. Lieberman explains this phenomenon using the example of a ten-chapter book. We spend the same amount of effort reading the first and last chapters why discipline in marketing brings better results but when we finish the first chapter, we are only 1/10 of the way through our journey, and when we read the last chapter, we feel that we are already closer to the end.
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What are the disadvantages of deadlines?
According to research conducted by the Academy of Management Review, clear deadlines not only do not motivate many people cpa email list but. Also they can also depress them. Seeing a large number of tasks, even spread out over. Also time and broken down into subprojects, a person becomes stressed and does not feel ready to get to work.
In one third of cases, this is due to chronic overwork and indicates burnout. In 10% of cases, it is a problem with estimating the time needed to complete tasks, when the employee simply has no chance of meeting the deadlines.
Psychologist Gabriela M. Jiga-Boy of Swansea University in Wales has found that the more difficult a task is, the more likely we are to put it off. Jiga-Boy conducted the following experiment: She asked participants. Also to imagine that about 30 events would happen in the near future—and to arrange them in chronological order.
In the case of complex tasks, we subconsciously set a longer time frame so that we can achieve what we have planned.
How to set deadlines?
There are several types of deadlines:
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Rigid (they cannot change) and flexible (we can adjust them).
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Absolute and relative. Absolute deadlines are set for tasks that will have no significance after the deadline has passed – buying tickets for a flight is pointless if the plane has already taken off. In the case of relative . Alsodeadlines, the importance of tasks decreases over time – a journalist may take on a hot topic, but . Alsothe longer it takes to write the text, the less likely the article is to become popular.