Building a schedule entirely of short deadlines, though, is unproductive in the long term, because it doesn’t leave time for ‘slack’ time – the period of so-called wasted time that helps us come up with innovative ideas and solutions, Staats explained.

“Without that slack, we’re likely to see less creativity and less innovation,” he said. “There’s a chance that what we throw out [by working quickly] was important to the effectiveness or the solution.”

A happy medium

Finding a balance is key, according to Ryan Holiday, an Austin-based media strategist and author of The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. Holiday balances writing with the day-to-day tasks of running a creative agency. His entire calendar is structured around the idea of setting stringent deadlines. But the blocks of time are more fluid, with certain types of work filling the blocks, but not just, say 30 minutes for one thing and 45 for the next on the list.

When working from home, Holiday spends the first half of his day doing long-term work, including writing or brainstorming, without strict time limits. After lunch he focuses on tasks with shorter deadlines including calls, meetings and setting aside time to answer emails in 30-minute increments. Working on the most important stuff in the mornings, allows him to power through the short deadlines he sets for easier tasks.

“It’s easy to get caught up in [only setting] short-term goals,” said Holiday. “You can suffer burnout.”

Deadline-setting is important, though, with longer projects, especially creative things which never feel quite finished without imposing limits, Holiday said. “With short-term deadlines you can’t get consumed with the endless possibilities,” Holiday said. Creating more stringent timing on tasks also gives a sense of accomplishment (something I can attest to when deleting tasks from my daily to-do list).

The key, above all, is not to set yourself up for playing catch-up. Prior to setting shorter deadlines, track how long the task typically takes (online tools such as Rescuetime.com or the Toggl app). Since most of us are repeating similar tasks, knowing the length of time these typically take can make it easier to set a more accurate deadline or whittle down a timeframe you think is too wide.

Staats recommended that I power through the initial tasks I have under a tight deadline (like a first draft of a story) and then leave less structured time to review and analyse my writing. This applies more widely than writing. In tech, for example, a programmer can write an initial round of code under a short deadline and then leave unstructured time to edit and refine it, he said.

Of course, the question of whether to even set a stricter deadline is a little trickier. If you know the intended outcome, it pays to set a shorter time limit, Staats said. “Someone needs to understand what is it that they are trying to accomplish,” to take more control of the time it takes, he said.

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