Links to any solid research on psychology of deadlines? Do probabilistic deadlines work? ("earthquake prep: do it before next big one hits")
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Paging ... how do you make a project SMART when there is no natural deadline? Fake deadlines don't work.
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Key is to realize ALL deadlines are fake. They are all arbitrary, invented, human fabrications. Knowing this, you can get creative
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Much more useful to think of time as 1 type of buffer (typically along w/ resources and scope, a la Iron Triangle of PM)
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All 3 can be dynamically added or subtracted. Pretending that a deadline is "real" is fixing it, which tends to cause other two to grow
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Fixing one side of the triangle can be useful, but it's only one way of doing things
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This discussion assumes we want to fix one side with a deadline. How to do that is the question. Declaring an arbitrary date doesn't work.
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Same w/ launch window: find and follow the constraints that most impact the priorities you most care about
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Situation: "This is never going to get done without a deadline." No time bound on project. Can't fix the T in SMART. Project stays undone.
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Screenshot of my OmniFocus. Those 24 overdue tasks are for projects that I made "SMART" by assigning a deadline. Fix it, mr productivity.
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I've successfully used public commitments to create artificial deadlines but need right conditions and counterparties.


