Accountability with a Deadline

Accountability: anything or anyone that helps you gain mental leverage to achieve the results you desire.

From 2002 to 2018, I had an odd responsibility in my family. I was in charge of music for almost all the weddings of my cousins. Not the reception DJ — live music for the ceremony. The BIG MOMENT. When the bride arrives at the back of the church and sets sail down the aisle in one of our culture’s most elaborate and exalted rituals.

Musicians feel a unique pressure in that moment. Screwing up the music at someone’s wedding, when everyone is paying attention, would be mortifying. Even if only the photos survive afterwards, people will talk about the music. For each wedding, I had to be ready on time and deliver perfect accompaniment. I had to hit the deadline.

The Motivating Deadline

Naming a start date or a deadline is one way to give ourselves mental leverage to finish our work. A date marked on a calendar feels official. It gives our project the aura of a streaming platform launch, the closing day of the festival, or the new album dropping online. The project gains mental importance, even if it doesn’t rise to the level of a once-in-a-lifetime wedding ceremony.

Sometimes we can motivate ourselves with a start date or end date alone. 

• Set a start date — a popular example is the New Year’s Resolution. “I’m going to go to the gym four times a week starting on January 1st.” New year’s feels like we’re walking into a different room, turning a page, clearing out all the old baggage.  We’re starting fresh, light, and unencumbered by the past.
• Set a deadline — It’s easy to set a deadline. “I’m going to draft my blog post by Saturday.” It gives us a target and can prioritize our efforts.

But it’s also easy for start and end dates to slip, if we don’t attach them to some other kind of motivation, in particular social pressure.

A start date on the calendar is inherently arbitrary, even if New Year’s feels like it isn’t. How many times have you heard people say, “I just wasn’t motivated to start New Year’s day”? Twelve months later, we hear a familiar chorus that New Year’s Day will again be the start of a new life.

Often we set our deadlines too far in the future. If we plan a year to complete a project, it can be easy to put off starting for six or nine months and think we’ll still be able to complete it.

Deadlines That (Usually) Work

We honor some deadlines more than others. Consider these:

• Tax deadlines – in the US, roughly 85% of people file their taxes by the annual deadline of April 15. 
• We finish packing for a vacation before we leave for the airport.
• We submit our application before the deadline if we want to be considered.
• Assignments are handed in at school.
• We meet project deadlines at work — because negative consequences can follow if we don’t.
• Christmas presents are purchased and wrapped before Christmas.

Similarly, marketers lure us into buying by creating an arbitrary scarcity of time: the last day of a sale, last chance for this offer, Black Friday deals, and contest entry deadlines.

How to Stick to Our Dates

By themselves, start dates and deadlines are among the weaker forms of accountability. It’s not uncommon to hear, “I missed my deadline.” Here are some ideas on how to honor our start and end dates.

• Create intermediate deadlines. To get our projects done, we need to make steady progress. If we want to repaint the kitchen before our party in July, it’s helpful to have deadlines in between. For instance (1) clear the upper cabinets (2) paint the upper cabinets (3) clear the lower cabinets … etc. If you haven’t done any painting by the last week of June, it may seem like an overwhelming task that’s easier to just put off again until the end of the year. 

• Work with other people. In 2022, over 400,000 people participated in the NaNoWriMo challenge to write a novel in a month. NaNoWriMo’s structure is motivating because not only are the beginning and end dates defined, but thousands of other people are doing it with you. Peer pressure is an additional motivation.
• Tell your deadline to people your project touches. If you want to create a phone app, invite a group of people to be beta testers and tell them the date when you’ll send them the beta version. Our deadline has more meaning if we’ve not only said we would finish something but the person we scheduled with has an interest in the outcome. 

What’s Your Account?

Do you set deadlines and stick to them? Or do deadlines go whooshing by?