
Set a deadline, Do it anyway - dawie
http://www.centernetworks.com/do-it-anyway-set-a-deadline
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pg
I never set deadlines. I just work as fast as I can. Likewise when I was poor
I never made budgets, but just tried never to spend any money.

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dawie
A deadline helps me to minimize features. "I can't build that and still make
the deadline.." and then also, the question: Is this feature so important that
the dealine can be moved for it?

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staunch
That seems sort of backwards to me. If you're implementing only the strictly
necessary there's no room for compromise in either direction. You can't ship
with less features than are necessary and you wouldn't add more just because
you have additional time according to a deadline.

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nostrademons
I prefer the opposite approach: every time you have a block of time, set a
task list of things you want to accomplish in that block, and hold yourself to
that.

Problem with deadlines is they tend to back-load a task. If you know you need
it done in a week, you might figure it'll take you 3 days to do, and hence
start it in 4 days. Of course, things rarely take as long as you expect them
to, so you end going over the deadline anyway or stressing yourself out to
make it.

With a task list, you'd start that task immediately, and it's done when it's
done. If you go over, you have some padding before it's necessary, and you can
decide whether to give up on your original task and start the next item, or
push through with it and postpone everything else. It's also much less
stressful, since things don't get bunched up around the deadlines.

