About faking the deadlines - this has never worked for me. Honestly, how do you expect to fool yourself? I've tried to find a bunch of reasons to convince myself that keeping the fake deadline is important but the other half of me just knows that it isn't. How do you convince yourself?
Seems the question remained on my mind for a while. I think the problem is "Convincing" the mind. You don't have to, I don't. I just "say" : "We have 10 mins. and then we have more interesting things to achieve, lets get this over with". Does it make sense ?
The book in the blog talks a lot about how we talk to ourselves. At times, just barking commands to the brain works, we just don't try it 8-)
Try this - Instead of calling it deadline, tell yourself that you'll give the task x mins. and you'll see how much you've work completed in that time. That makes the mind conscious of the ticking clock and focuses you on the job at hand.