“Well, time’s up!”

I took a little too much pleasure in slapping my laptop closed and packed up my things.

“You finished?” My roommate eyed me suspiciously.

“Nope! But time is up! I gave myself an hour and it has been an hour.”

I walked out of the study room with a stupid smile still plastered on my face; I didn’t know if I was a genius or an idiot, but I liked my new system.

Two years earlier, at the advice of an upperclassman, I had started planning out my weeks on an online calendar. Between his classes, marching band, and his leadership responsibilities at the house, he was pretty busy, but he never missed a class, rehearsal, or meeting; I wanted to be like that.

I started out with my class schedule, in red, of course, because I wanted the school to burn to the ground. The deadlines, like homework, then house responsibilities, then date nights, study sessions, appointment reminders and even when to sleep! Pretty soon, my calendar absolutely ran my life. I did nothing without consulting it and every minute of every day was accounted for. Well, at least that is what I told people and told myself. The truth was, there were a few things missing. For example, I never scheduled checking social media and yet my screen time records would show a couple hours/day. Where was this time coming from?

The nights prior to exams were especially egregious. “I will study 3 hours, every night, for 3 nights prior to the exam” I said, and my calendar made it official. But when those nights came around, the world was suddenly alive with distractions. When I finally got around to studying, it was time for a quick study break – you have to take breaks when you study for 3 hours straight! When bed time rolled around I knew I hadn’t gotten in my full 3; I would have to make it up tomorrow! I would shuffle my schedule for the next day and, before long, I had 7 hours of studying to look forward to the day before the exam – and you can guess how well those went.

What was going wrong? According to my calendar, I was a model student and I was doing everything right and on time!

After 2 year of scheduling my life, I came to the realization that my precious, meticulous calendar was a farce. I planned out my week in advance, down to the minute, until success was guaranteed. But the week I planned was not the week I lived. The schedule I laid out for myself was a good one, a week I could be proud of, but by the time Saturday rolled around, it was nothing more than a ledger of good intentions.

I was violating the Law of Unbreakable Deadlines…

The Law of Unbreakable Deadlines

It isn’t a real deadline if you can break it, and all that is breakable, breaks.

A real deadline is not yield sign – it’s not even a stop sign – it is a wall.

The hard worker works until the job is done, the smart worker works until the deadline is reached.

According to the old adage of Parkinson’s Law, “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” In other words, you can never over-estimate how long a job will take, it can always be made to take longer.

Why did I plan to study for 9 hours in the three days leading up to an exam? What was holy about that number?

This time estimate was comprised of 1. my estimate of how long it would actually take me to learn/memorize the information. 2. the amount of time I would spend getting distracted or need to take breaks. 3. how long it would take to feel good about myself 4. how much time I needed to put on the calendar to meet social expectations 5. buffers to account for inevitable interruptions 6. how long I needed to study in order to commiserate with classmates after the exam… the list goes on.

Ultimately, the only consideration that actually mattered was the first one. All of the other factors turned my deadlines to jelly. Ever built a wall out of jelly?

I had heard of Parkinson’s Law before, but it was tongue and cheek right? But, what if it wasn’t? If I took it literally, and work really did expand to fill the time available for its completion, what would happen if I limited the supply of time? Not just on my calendar, but in reality. If I treated Parkinson’s Law as a Law of Nature, then by setting impossibly tight timelines to my work, I would find the true amount of time my work required. The experiment began.

Electronics homework usually took me 3 to 4 hours to complete; that night, I had 1 hour. I set a timer and got to work; I would turn in whatever I had completed by the end of the hour. I finished 3/4 of the assignment. I couldn’t believe it – I actually wanted to finish the rest! But I stuck to the plan and turned it in: my first real deadline. I would not come to recognize the full depth to which this approach would influence and transform my life until much later, but I had stumbled upon one of the greatest productivity hacks of all time.

Let me explain. When you give yourself a deadline, one of two things will happen: you will respect it, or you will break it. When you break a deadline, you send a very clear signal to your subconscious mind that deadlines are mere suggestions. Mere suggestions don’t have much authority. They stomp in and throw a tantrum and your mind does a quick review of its priorities.

“Priority one: complete the work! Have we completed the work yet?”

“No sir, but we have a deadline here insisting that we stop at once!”

“Stop? Before the work is done? On whose authority? Does he have any paper work?”

“He has a badge sir! It says… ‘SUGGESTION.'”

“SUGGESTION?! HA! We get loads of those! Just this morning we had a suggestion in here whining about not eating donuts for breakfast for the third day in a row. What a drag! Toss him with the others and get back to work!”

Suggestions only work when they tell your mind to do whatever it already wants to do.

When you respect a deadline, you are telling your brain that deadlines are not mere suggestions; they are forces of nature.

“Sir, the work was just submitted!”

“What? You mean the job is done?”

“No sir, this bloke just waltzed over and pressed ‘send’ without so much much as a strongly-worded letter!”

“You mean the broad fellow with the stopwatch? Dammit! I knew he looked shifty. Tell him to mind his own business!”

“He’s got a bomb sir….”

When first introduced, real deadlines cause chaos. Your mind doesn’t know what to do with the intruder with a bomb and a stopwatch. Pretty soon, it learns to plan ahead. The purpose of a deadline is to generate positive stress that promotes creative thinking. Anyone can build a house if they have 20 years to do it; apply a deadline of 1 month and suddenly you must become highly creative (or rich) or you are doomed to fail.

Until you respect your deadlines and prioritize obeying them over getting the work done, your calendar will never be more than a ledger of good intentions. Once you submit yourself to the deadlines, your calendar becomes a powerful tool. It is not merely a guess at how you will spend your time, it is a codification of your success into Law.

But how do you start? How can you make deadlines an unstoppable force for good in your life?

You have to be willing to risk failure in order to make your deadlines real. You have to be willing to quit halfway through the job. These small losses early on will inspire creativity and help you understand your own limits and how they can be expanded. You can’t possibly know what you are capable of until you have tried your hardest and failed.

The first time I set an “impossible” deadline and followed it, it cost me 25% off of a homework assignment. This was a negligible sacrifice in the face of the number of hours it ultimately saved me by showing me how fast I could complete assignments with full focus – and that was just for homework! After following the Law of Unbreakable Deadlines for a few months, I set my sights on writing a book. I set an aggressive deadline that, at one point, would require me to finish 3 pages a day, and that didn’t account for proof-reading, editing, rewriting, and the ten-thousand other little details that go into writing a book. I told everyone I knew that I would publish the book on June 1st. My writing coach suggested that I wait until December, but I was working according to a deadline, not a suggestion. On June 1st, there was going to be a published book with my name on it, even if it meant stopping mid-sentence and publishing without a cover. If you want to become a published author by the age of 22, publish whatever you have written by the age of 22!

A good deadline makes you sweat. If it doesn’t make you sweat, it won’t make you think.

Set an “impossible” deadline today and obey it, especially if it costs you something to fail. Consider this the price of tuition for a Master’s Degree in productivity. Before long, your unbreakable deadlines will turn your calendar from a ledger of good intentions to a road map to success.

If you are having trouble setting and sticking to deadlines, or feel like you are constantly running behind; check this out to see how you can free up hours every day.

Collin Jewett is an engineer, author, and accelerated learning and memory coach. When not exploring the Colorado wilderness with his wife Jess, Collin can be found writing his next book, recording educational content, or working directly with businesses and individuals to maximize their growth potential.