How To Get More Done by Ignoring Deadlines

The reason deadlines are useless is because people will always extend their work. Kind of like Parkinson's Law said, that work will expand to fill the space that we give it. So if we say we're going to get something done by Friday at 5, we're not going to start working on it until Thursday or Friday at the latest. But if we actually think about how long the project is going to take and when we're actually going to do the work, we'll probably get it done faster. And if we tell people how little time and how little money we want them to spend on something, they'll be able to get it done in less time as well. So setting a deadline is useless, but saying when you're going to actually do the work and how little time you're going to do it is actually really powerful.