Deadlines have some sort of magic to them. A project can continue to drag on for months, but as soon as we decide to make a deadline1, usually one of two things happen.
- The entire universe conspires to make sure we meet the deadline with everything we want to do.
- We conspire to make sure we meet the deadline with everything we can (and should) do.
Either way, we do end up with much more than we would have without the deadline. That is the magic of the deadline - we suddenly know what are the most important parts of our project, what are the optimal ways to implement them, and what we are supposed to do if something goes wrong. We are able to read many more papers, write many more lines of code, write much more text, and also bear many more meetings!
Admittedly, even if we decide to not make the deadline, we are much better prepared for the next one2. But this is also when the magic of the deadline is the most apparent. As soon as we decide to call off the deadline, all of the super powers that were granted to us by the deadline are taken away. In fact it may take a little while to even get back to the same level of productivity that we had before we the deadline was set.
I was initially going to conclude by saying that deadlines seem to be like booster shots of productivity (or motivation). But now I think they are more like steroids. They allow us to gather our own strength and concentrate it for a short period of time3 (and when their effects wear off we are obviously temporarily weaker). They may also have some side-effects. For instance, people may begin to prioritize results over the process, and may (hopefully) unintentionally bias their study. They may also start caring more making things work well, instead of making them well. Most importantly, people stop taking intellectual risks which I feel is a very important part of research.
As only a junior researcher4, I cannot really comment on whether these side-effects are acceptable (or even desirable). Yet from my experience5 so far, I think deadlines are a powerful tool that we can harness to our advantage (of course, with terms and conditions applied).
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Of course we set internal deadlines throughout the length of the project, but they are comfortably flexible. I am talking about a deadline that the universe has set for us, like a conference submission deadline. ↩
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This is also more common than one might imagine. It is difficult to decide whether to work more and risk losing a deadline (and thus some feedback) or to claim victory and submit whatever there is. Thankfully in research we are allowed to use the phrase “future work” for “incomplete work”, which makes it easier to do the latter. ↩
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Deadlines wouldn’t have any magic if we set them months in advance! ↩
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Frankly I am not sure if I am even a junior researcher yet. Evidently, I am junior. Also I am trying to be a researcher. So I suppose I can take this creative liberty. ↩
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Which is more about calling off deadlines than meeting them. ↩