It is a bad thing, because you should do something at the best time, not when it’s urgent. They won’t usually happen to coincide.
For example, the best time to write essays for med school applications is over the summer, because you have free time; not near the deadlines which are around December, when you’ll be taking classes.
I think it’s missing the point to claim that the deadlines are causing you to procrastinate in this case. If there weren’t any deadlines for med school applications, what would it even mean to procrastinate on them?
It’s also not clear to me that the best time to work on med school applications is in fact over the summer. There are other things you could be doing with that luxuriously free summer time. During the school year you’re working on various unpleasant things already, so you might as well lump one more unpleasant thing in there. (I did my grad school applications in November of the relevant year and that was fine.)
It is a bad thing, because you should do something at the best time, not when it’s urgent. They won’t usually happen to coincide.
For example, the best time to write essays for med school applications is over the summer, because you have free time; not near the deadlines which are around December, when you’ll be taking classes.
I think it’s missing the point to claim that the deadlines are causing you to procrastinate in this case. If there weren’t any deadlines for med school applications, what would it even mean to procrastinate on them?
It’s also not clear to me that the best time to work on med school applications is in fact over the summer. There are other things you could be doing with that luxuriously free summer time. During the school year you’re working on various unpleasant things already, so you might as well lump one more unpleasant thing in there. (I did my grad school applications in November of the relevant year and that was fine.)
Hmm. The post title should probably be “Does anchoring on deadlines cause procrastination?”
I think the basic mechanism behind procrastination is hyperbolic discounting.