What’s the Right Deadline to Set for Finishing Work on Time? New Study Sheds Light

In many situations nowadays, time is a luxury we can’t afford. Setting a deadline to finish work on time is surely difficult. You can give yourself an extra amount of time to finish those tasks. You can set the deadline alarm on your smartphone earlier than usual so that the pressure will hopefully make you more productive.

The possibilities are endless, but which one is the best formula? ScienceAlert.com writes about new research that was led by scientists from the University of Otago in New Zealand, and the results will surely leave you amazed.

No deadline at all is the answer

Those participating in the study were asked to complete a short survey. One of the deadlines was of 7-9 days, another one added an extra time of three weeks, and there was also the variant of no deadline at all.

The response rate was highest when no deadline was set. Oddly enough, adding the feeling of urgency seems to be the exact problem.

Maroš Servátka, an economist from the Macquarie Business School (Australia), declared as quoted by EurekAlert!:

Appropriately selected deadlines can signal urgency and importance of the task, which increases the chance of completion as people are likely to get things done early on,

This is particularly important in situations that do not feature natural reminders because once people postpone the task, they might forget about it.

More precisely, 8.32 of the participants completed the survey when there wasn’t any deadline. When the deadline was of a week, 6.59 percent of the participants managed to complete the survey. As for those who had a month as the deadline, only 5.53 of them finished the task.

The new research was published in Economic Inquiry.

Feel free to tell us in a comment what you think about the new study!