When deadlines fail 

Most of us have experienced it — a looming deadline is fast approaching, and the time needed to meet it is too soon. You scramble, hoping to get the job done. And then, just before the deadline hits, an extension is offered. You breathe a sigh of relief, and get distracted with other, more pressing issues, with the added time used to put out more urgent fires.  

Life is filled with deadlines, some hard and others soft. Whether it is at work, at home, or at play, there is always a date when something is due. The government is mostly good at setting deadlines and sticking with them — but not always. 

Federal income tax returns must be filed on the same date every year, the first non-weekend day after April 15. They do offer a six-month extension, but you must file a form to request it. However, if you owe taxes, you will still be liable for the amount, plus any interest that accrues until the tax bill is paid. All an extension does is push the deadline out six months into the future and makes any amount due even higher.  

There are well defined dates set by fiscal factors that demand action in Congress. This involves funding the federal government or raising the debt limit, two events that require congressional action to avoid a government shutdown or default. As expected, the necessary deadlines are typically met and the projected calamities averted, at least for another day sometime in the future.  

As we are now seeing, Republican House members are doing a poor job electing a Speaker. Perhaps if a hard deadline were imposed, or the House Speaker position were to roll over to a Democrat, they might act with the necessary urgency that the issue demands.  

Earlier in my career, I served as a rotator program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF). My primary responsibility was to work with technical experts to assess research proposals and make decisions on how NSF funds should be invested. At the time, the NSF had firm deadlines for when proposals must be submitted. If a proposal arrived one second late, it could be returned to the proposer, without the opportunity to be reviewed and possibly funded.  

A few years ago, many directorates at NSF did away with deadlines. The unexpected consequence was that the number of research proposals submitted dropped. Without deadlines, those interested in getting their research ideas funded lost an invisible motivation to prepare and submit a research proposal for funding consideration.  

On the other hand, those who did submit proposals were highly motivated. Only time will tell if the outputs from those that were funded are more impactful in the non-deadline era versus the deadline era. More is not always better if the excess is of lower quality. Quality, not quantity, is the appropriate measure of success when it comes to investing public funds.  

There is no one-size-fits-all answer when it comes to deadlines. In some circumstances, deadlines are necessary. They provide guiderails for funneling people’s attention and motivating them to act when they may otherwise get distracted. In other circumstances, deadlines provide the wrong motivation to act, when inaction may yield superior results.  

If deadlines are imposed, then the example set by the federal government makes sense, which is to stick with the deadline. Extensions and exceptions erode their purpose and weaken their credibility. Deadlines are needed when the action may not be attractive to take, like filing taxes or perhaps meeting a submission requirement for an undesirable task.  

Of course, when there are no deadlines for a task to be completed, each of us is free to set our own personal deadline so as to get the task off our plate or whatever reason motivates us to act.  

In any circumstance when deadlines add no value or benefit, imposing them is an unnecessary burden. Without deadlines, people will act based on their own internal motivation, based on the importance of the task to them and perhaps other personal factors. What is reasonable to expect is that in such situations, their output may be of higher value.  

We must all meet deadlines, and at times, we all miss deadlines. The need to extend deadlines may expose a flaw in the task, or perhaps even the choice of people charged to meet the deadline. 

In many circumstances, deadlines will get extended, making them less significant — and, if done repeatedly, ignored. A world with no deadlines may be desirable by some. The open question is how much will get done, especially tasks that most find unappealing to undertake. Given such a risk, deadlines are certainly here to stay, no matter how seriously they are taken, or ignored. 

Sheldon H. Jacobson, Ph.D., is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He applies his expertise in data-driven risk-based decision-making to evaluate and inform public policy.