Two of the most dependably consistent aspects of the human experience are death and taxes. But one often overlooked, yet tangentially related to both, is deadlines — though as a source of dread, they are certainly never far from our periphery. They’re present in everything we do, and at times, it can feel like they’re entirely out of our control.
Surely we all have our own run-ins with a blown deadline: a project at work that required more hours in the day, a test for which we didn’t fully prepare, or that renovation project at home that was supposed to be finished months ago. But is there a reason that at times, we just can’t finish our work on time? And is there something we can do about it? The bad news is that deadlines will never stop being a source of stress, even when the pressure isn’t on us alone. But the good news? We can get a jump on our project schedules if we tackle the basics of deadline management and identify the usual culprits that can stand in our way.
Understand the circumstances of the task at hand.
One thing is certain: projects tend to heavily depend on circumstances that are often outside our immediate or direct control. One such facet of circumstance is the presence of distractions: the inevitable cloud that hangs over teams steering efforts in perpendicular directions in collaborative office environments, gradually chipping away at our focus until we abandon it completely. And in a world of constant distractions, it’s easy to fall into the state of continuous partial attention. This state introduces an artificial sense of constant crisis that puts us on high alert to account for an environment that is always on.
At face value, this may seem like a productivity miracle. But according to research from the University of California at Irvine, every time we get interrupted, it takes 23 minutes to center our focus again. And if we’re continually focused on a spectrum of tasks, are we truly focused on anything? Linda Stone, the psychologist who developed the theory of continuous partial attention, concedes that the state does lend itself to function. But in large doses, it can contribute to a stressful lifestyle, habitually operating in crisis management mode, and toward a compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively.
Another aspect of circumstances that tends to impact our deadlines is coordination neglect, or the failure to consider how groups can negatively impact our productivity. From the perspective of economics, this may seem backwards: higher team counts lend themselves to higher levels of productivity, right? But when groups of people put their heads together, meetings do tend to run a little longer as a result. When we staff projects with bigger teams, we focus on the rewards reaped by specialization instead of the hindrances and obstacles created by communication, task handoffs, and multiple efforts combined into a single result — and ultimately, we risk pushing our deadlines.
Account for scope.
Another dimension of project timelines is our consideration of scope. And whereas circumstances are managed in the immediacy of the present, a project’s scope encompasses the whole runway. Typically, we depend on informed decision-makers to have the experience and the insight to set us up for success. But even the most seasoned project managers can overestimate or underestimate timelines if one of three biases are present. One such hindrance is the optimism bias, or the tendency to simply assume with rose-colored glasses that projects will go smoothly. We never account for specific bumps in the road when planning a project: after all, how can we account for what we don’t know? Optimism bias is closely tied to the planning fallacy, which explains why we often underestimate the time it will take for us to complete a project. When Roger Buehler, a psychology professor at the Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, asked a group of students to estimate how long it would take to finish their research papers, he found that while predictions averaged around 33 days, the papers actually took 55. Humans are resilient and optimistic, that’s for sure — even if it means making us hope and believe we’ll be able to complete something earlier, despite past empirically-collected evidence pointing another direction. That’s called reference-class forecasting — taking past scenarios and their outcomes into consideration to inform future instances.
Leverage data.
Most strategists and engineers will swear by the value of data in decision-making. But as humans are hopeful creatures, we don’t often instinctively allow strategy and numbers to dictate the micro-decisions we make. When it comes to meeting deadlines, understanding our past behavior is critical in accurately forecasting outcomes of projects. But forces at times will work against our ability to see this number-driven approach through until the end. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania call this phenomenon algorithm aversion, referring to the tendency people have to avoid using forecasting algorithms they perceive as faulty — even when the algorithms have a lower margin of error than their human forecaster counterparts. Why? People love to go with their gut, despite the very real consequences of doing so in practice. And whether that means miscalculating a deadline by avoiding reference-class forecasting or getting stuck in traffic in downtown Austin, we do have a tendency to forgive ourselves faster than an algorithm that fails judgement calls from time to time, too.
Where do we go from here?
One thing is certain: deadlines aren’t going anywhere, no matter how many articles through which we sift, contemplate, and link to our friends in an effort to avoid them. But managing our time effectively is achievable if we act with intention, and routinely step back to see the full picture of the projects we do, and the work we complete.
Whether we’re just algorithm-averse and would benefit from the static nature of data and numbers, or simply need to take a step back and acknowledge our tendency to slip back into a state of continuous partial attention, the only certainty in meeting deadlines seems to be continuously holding ourselves accountable, and leveraging that leftover hopefulness to get a jump on the next one.
Deadlines, and Why People Miss Them was originally published in accpl on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
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