In that case, maybe adding pressure makes you go slower than if you were doing the task without pressure, but probably not slower than you go if you’re not spending time on the task at all.
How much you want to deliberately allow yourself slack, lack of pressure, and incubation seems heavily task dependent. The more creativity needed and the less clear consequences for time delay, the more you may want to put off having a deadline.
If the goal is to make your office beautiful, you may want to consider those tacks and box for a while. If the goal is to have light for the power outage that occured by nightfall, best to have a deadline.
I agree with the line of reasoning, but I’d probably err on the side of adding a deadline even for designing your office - if you want to make sure the task gets done at some point, setting the deadline a month away seems better than not having one at all.
I tend to work in the reverse way—if I notice myself putting something off for too long, I add a deadline, but my default is to decide fresh each time what to do.
There’s also the body of research on incubation periods, showing that if you spend time not doing the task at all (while being aware of the task) you’ll be more creative than if you get to the task immediately: http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/elink.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=prlinks&retmode=ref&id=19210055
How much you want to deliberately allow yourself slack, lack of pressure, and incubation seems heavily task dependent. The more creativity needed and the less clear consequences for time delay, the more you may want to put off having a deadline.
If the goal is to make your office beautiful, you may want to consider those tacks and box for a while. If the goal is to have light for the power outage that occured by nightfall, best to have a deadline.
I agree with the line of reasoning, but I’d probably err on the side of adding a deadline even for designing your office - if you want to make sure the task gets done at some point, setting the deadline a month away seems better than not having one at all.
I tend to work in the reverse way—if I notice myself putting something off for too long, I add a deadline, but my default is to decide fresh each time what to do.