I’m been thinking a bit about the importance of forcing functions and deadlines. I’ve been considering whether to take a class this semester but sadly the class that would make the most sense for me to take isn’t being offered until 2013. I’ve been debating between taking a class on a less relevant (to me) topic or simply trying to study the material that will be most relevant to me on my own.
Classes offer many advantages over self-study. You have an expert in the subject who chooses the material, is able to answer your questions, and provides you with feed back on your work. Lectures provide a dimension that you can’t get by simply reading a book. Still, the more I think about it, the more I realize that classes also serve as a forcing function. Assignments have deadlines and in order to meet them, you have to carve out the time to work on them.
I’m seen a similar phenomena in other areas. Iron Blogger is a prime example. Almost every one of the Iron Blogger participants has been blogging more frequently since joining. Iron Blogger imposes a hard deadline and even though the cost of missing the deadline is small ($5) people still strive to meet it. Even if you make minimum wage, your time cost to write a blog post is probably going to be greater than $5. Ostensibly, if you believe that blogging is important you would be doing it frequently without the pressure of a deadline.
Last semester, I participated in a program at the Harvard Gym called the Group Exercise Triathlon which required participants to complete 34 group exercise classes in various categories by the end of the semester. The prize for doing this was a free T-shirt. Once I committed to the program, I did everything that I could to finish it. I probably got more exercise in the month of November than any other point in my life. Again the T-shirt itself was not the primary motivator it was a deeper desire to meet a deadline.
Why do deadlines and forcing functions work? Earliest deadline first is a simple and often optimal strategy but tends to neglect the important but not urgent tasks. Assigning hard deadlines to those tasks ensures that they are not neglected. Similarly deadlines also enable greater mental focus on a task.
Game theory can also provide insight into the effectiveness of deadlines. Deadlines irrevocably commit you to a course of action. In our society, they allow you to leave a social situation to work on a task when social obligations would have normally required a longer visit. Compare “I wish I could hang out longer but I have to finish X by tomorrow” to “I’d like to hang out longer but I want to finish X by tomorrow even though there will be no consequences if I finish it a day later.” (This may be why external deadlines are more effective, if you set your own deadline, you can usually give yourself an extension.) A Freudian psychologist might also see deadlines as a way of the ego and super ego committing you to doing something that the id will not enjoy.
The Dark Side of Forcing Functions
One danger is people gaming the system. In the case of a class, this may mean doing what will get you the best grade rather than what help you learn the most, e.g cramming, ignoring material that won’t be on the exam, avoiding interesting but risky projects. (I’ve found classes taken for no credit can actually be more stressful because while the deadlines are still there, grades are no longer the metric of whether I’ve put in enough time.) Within Iron Blogger, it means writing a post that can be finished by the deadline rather then working on the best possible post. (This post will not win a Pulitzer and there are other blog posts that I’ve been meaning to write. But the others would not have been finished by the deadline.) Within the Group Exercise Triathlon, it meant focusing on the classes that would most help meet my requirements rather than the ones that were the most enjoyable or the healthiest.
Deadlines have undeniable power to make people accomplish certain tasks. However, it remains to be seen whether there are limits to their power. Deadlines are often met by topics such as all nighters which are bad long term strategies and by procrastinating on other tasks. It’s possible that deadlines don’t increase overall productivity but merely reallocate it within a zero sum game. I plan to explore deadlines more and to look for a way to create self imposed deadlines that have the same motivational power as external ones.
