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Ass-Kicking Email – Kill stress by avoiding hard deadlines

Hey,

In this email I’m going to share with you a simple tactic that can
greatly reduce the stress you face in your studies.

That tactic is simple: avoid hard deadlines whenever possible.

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What is a “Hard” Deadline?

I like to distinguish two types of deadlines you might face–hard
and soft.

A hard deadline is a deadline that has an objective consequence if
you’re late. The due date on most academic assignments fit into this
picture nicely. Finish late and you lose marks or fail.

A soft deadline, in contrast, is a deadline that only has a
subjective consequence. This means that if you miss it, nothing
terrible will happen, but you may feel bad for not getting it done.

An example of a soft deadline is wanting to finish your essay this
week, even though it isn’t due in a month. There is psychological
pressure to finish–but that’s it. There’s no objective consequences
to not meeting this “soft” deadline.

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Avoid Hard Deadlines

The key to avoiding a lot of stress is to avoid having your “hard”
deadline be the same as your actual deadline for stress-enabling
tasks.

Any big tasks that cause you a lot of stress are better done on a
soft deadline. There are two reasons for this, one obvious, the
other more subtle.

The obvious reason to use soft deadlines is that you have a mistake
zone if something goes wrong. If you’re sick, missing a key paper
or simply can’t finish on time, you’ll still be fine. This is the
reason most students think of when they feel they “should” finish
assignments ahead of their due date.

It turns out that isn’t the big reason why to use soft deadlines.
Although this logic is true, some people perform better under
pressure. Also, it requires more discipline to finish things in
advance than to just do them on time.

The real reason soft deadlines are powerful is because hard
deadlines tend to clump.

It would be nice to live in a world where all the deadlines were
evenly distributed. But that isn’t the case.

Midterms, final papers, exams and projects tend to clump so that a
lot of assignments will be due in a small period and there will be
gaps with relatively few deadlines.

This means if you rely on hard deadlines to motivate yourself,
your work schedule will oscillate between being completely
overwhelmed and free during the term.

Using soft deadlines allows you to strategically shift this burden
away, so that you can do a minimal, constant amount of work and
never have to cram or crunch again.

—

Harder “Soft” Deadlines

The key to getting this system to work, however, is to build up the
mental habit of thinking of your “soft” deadlines in harder terms.

This can be a tricky mental habit to form–especially if you’re used
to relying on due dates to motivate yourself.

However, here are a few suggestions I have for making it work:

– In your calendar, mark both the hard and soft deadline. This will
remind you both of when something is actually due and when you
want to strategically finish it early.

– Use your weekly daily goals to “push” items further down the
calendar into your schedule.

– Get in the habit of emphasizing your personal schedule over any
objective one. This habit allows you to work on your terms, not
on anyone else’s.

Once you have harder “soft” deadlines, you can rely on this personal
schedule to smooth out the normal irregularities in your classes.

I’ve often been surprised to find that when actually doing this, I
can greatly reduce my subjective feeling of busyness, because I work
a minimal amount each week, instead of just in large clumps near the
end.

Moreover, it’s easier to habituate yourself to a certain amount of
work each week, than large bursts, so the habitual work goes
unnoticed.

Good luck with this tactic, and I’ll see you on the other side!