Dr Michelle Dickinson: New study investigates how deadlines motivate people to stop procrastinating

How are you with deadlines?  Were you the kid at school who handed everything in early, or the one up all night cramming it all in to submit 1 minute before the deadline? For the first time, researchers have studied the effect of placing a deadline on how we procrastinate or get things done. The research published in the journal Economic Inquiry looked into how deadlines can help to motivate people to perform tasks that they’ve been procrastinating over.  What they found is that different deadline lengths may have different effects (and not all of them good). While increasing the deadline length might seem better as it gives a person more time to complete a task, the research found that it also meant that the task is likely to be postponed until later and possibly forgotten. Their study found that people tend to respond quickly to something that has no deadline or short deadline of one-week, essentially a self-imposed short deadline  This sense of urgency, or not know when it has to be done by meant respondents just did it straight away. Interestingly when given a one‐month deadline, volunteers in the study seemed to procrastinate and this group was the least likely to complete the task. The findings could really help managers know how time-pressure might help their staff to manage projects better, as well as help increase response rates for e-mail surveys or charitable giving. LISTEN ABOVESee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.