I'm getting rid of deadlines and due dates in my business for the next 100 days. This post explains why.

I was browsing yet another anti-productivity-productivity book in the bookstore the other day when a thought occurred to me:

What if I just eliminated deadlines and due dates from my business?

I stopped, frozen in the BookTok recommendations aisle in front of 3 fae romance novels, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and Tara Westover's memoir.

It felt like I was having an illegal thought.

Aren't deadlines and due dates just an essential part of functioning in modern life? Would I even be able to do that successfully? Would it help me function, or would it make things 1000x worse?

In that moment, I decided that I wanted to do an experiment with it. I wanted to see what would happen if I eliminated deadlines and due dates from my business for 100 days. That's basically from now until a week before Black Friday, so if I fail I can still salvage the best promo of the year.

But first, I had to do some research. I had to figure out what I was up against, what was possible, if anyone else had even tried this, and what I could do to make this work.

So, like any good neurodivergent with an idea that grabs ahold and won't let go, I sat down in front of Google with a large amount of caffeine, a complete disregard for my biological needs, and a note-taking app, and I got to work.

And here's what I learned.

Why do deadlines exist?

If I'm going to throw out the concept completely for 100 days, I might as well start by figuring out the essentials. What is a deadline, and why do they exist?

The concept of a deadline is most colourfully illustrated by the origin of the word itself. The word "deadline" comes from the term "dead line" used in the prison system in the US civil war.

It's literally a line, drawn around the prison. And if you go past it, the guards shoot you dead.

Dead. Line.

One can easily see how the Friedman-obsessed efficiency economics of the mid-20th century adopted this punitive term for missing a target date.

But why do we set such firm dates in the first place? Why do projects and tasks have dates that feel fatal if passed?

Here are a few of the common beliefs that I uncovered about deadlines:

  • Without deadlines, people won't work on projects at all.
  • All time spent working on a project is valuable, and all time spent not working on a project is not valuable, therefore maximizing time spent on a project by setting a firm finish date means we waste less time.
  • When there are time-based dependencies, such as prepping Black Friday promotions as an example, a deadline is necessary to ensure we're prepared in time.
  • People need clear expectations. If we don't tell them what we want done and when we need it, they'll never meet our expectations.
  • Parkinson's Law: A task will expand to fill the time you give it. So if we don't give it a timeline, it will expand infinitely.
  • The best version of a project is the one that can be delivered exactly on the prescribed timeline. Not before, not after.
  • Other people need to know when you'll be finished something, or they won't be able to plan their work.
  • Time and urgency is the most efficient and effective way to prioritize tasks.

On the surface, these don't seem particularly inaccurate or harmful. They are, and we'll get into that later, but this seems like an effective premise to work from.

I also found several of the negatives of deadlines. Interestingly, these were almost never given as reasons not to have deadlines - but rather things to work around while still pushing yourself to meet deadlines. They were:

  • If we know they're arbitrary, we won't meet them anyway.
  • Demand avoidance triggers in neurodivergent folx.
  • Time blindness and the planning paradox mean we always, always underestimate how long something will take and are too optimistic when planning for contingencies.
  • When we have deadlines, time decides our focus for us, which takes away some of our autonomy.
  • Other tasks may be more motivating and joyful, but if they're not "due next", they'll be put off.
  • The version of a project that can meet a deadline exactly is rarely the best version of a project - you often actually needed more or less time.
  • Rest and relaxation are required for creative output, but deadlines force us to deprioritize those activities in the interest of meeting our dates.

Okay, so we have the pros and cons of deadlines. Why would we want to get rid of them all together though?

While I was questioning my own sanity with my back to an entire end cap full of Colleen Hoover, I couldn't help but think, why do I want to get rid of deadlines?

I mean, I'm like most neurodivergent people.

I have a laundry list of overdue tasks every day that I try to get through. Things I wish I had finished last week, or earlier.

I balance those with the things that are due right now, today, on fire.

Everything else exists in some sort of weird time purgatory where it will neither be done now or not now but at some mythical point in the abstract concept my brain has called "the future".

So, if my own history has any weight here, I need deadlines more than just about anyone. Half the time, the only reason I finish anything is because it's due in 5 minutes (or was due 5 days ago.)

So who the hell am I to do away with the one thing that actually makes me productive?

Turns out, I want to do away with deadlines because they're doing more harm than good. And I know this.

The more I dug into all of this research, the more I realized that the way my neurodivergent brain is wired is actually in fundamental opposition to hard due dates and deadlines.

In fact, it's often the cortisol driven by this opposition that makes me meet deadlines in the first place - becoming both a self-fulfilling prophecy, and self-sabotaging mechanism for burnout.

Let's look at this through the lens of neurodivergence for just a second.

In the words of the Stimpunks foundation, "The ADHD neurotype is: neural hyperconnectivity, monotropism, holotropic sensory gating, a neuroceptive need for novelty and variety, an interest-driven dopamine system, and varying processing styles (both bottom-up and top-down processing)."

In plain language, that means that as someone with ADHD, my brain:

  • Is constantly connecting thoughts
  • Can only realistically focus on one thing at a time
  • If not in that singular focus, perceives everything, everywhere, all at once
  • Craves novelty and variety
  • Produces dopamine when I actively participate in my interests
  • Processes the world in multiple ways, and can neither truly break down a whole into its parts OR build the parts into a complete whole

And let's also remember, that for my brain, the only times that exist are now, not now, and ✨ the future ✨ (mythical time purgatory when I'll be a different person entirely with full executive functioning and unlimited energy.)

Super fun, obviously, but more interestingly, this seems to be in direct opposition to how deadlines are supposed to work.

See, deadlines are supposed to keep your scope narrow - not connecting and cross-pollinating other tasks. Have you ever had an idea for a cool freebie and found yourself 4 hours later updating your blog categories to include that subject? That's because you connected the tasks.

Deadlines are supposed to allow you to make small progress each day toward a goal, over time, while working on other things in between. (Consistency? Never heard of her.)

Deadlines require us to set aside other sensory input and focus, even when it feels impossible.

Deadlines are predictable and tell us exactly what needs to be done each day for weeks or months in advance, robbing us of novelty and variety.

Deadlines almost guarantee that you'll have to spend a fair bit of time actively ignoring your interests in favour of the prioritized tasks.

Deadlines are created primarily with top-down planning, not leaving much room for other ways of processing.

And deadlines, specifically, are a linear tool to manage productivity that I'm trying to apply to my non-linear brain.

My neurodivergent self can do exactly none of those things effectively.

So why do I still insist that deadlines are essential to get work done?

By this point, my brain was already chanting "down with deadlines! Burn the due dates!" That's impulsivity for you. I had to find out more about why these things don't work, what deadlines actually get wrong, and whether or not anyone had successfully worked without them.

What deadlines do to us - the bad, and the ugly.

We already think we know the good, but what are the negatives? Not the "things we can work around", the true "oh no this might actually be a bad idea" negatives? To find out, I dug deep into the experiences of deadlines that people have shared online - mostly in blogs. Here's what I found:

  • Deadlines often feel like pressure. Pressure often doesn't feel good. Therefore deadlines often don't feel good. They're all stick, no carrot. And our brains are absolutely awful at being motivated by the stick unless it's big, on fire, and looming. Like, for example, a deadline you've known about for months that's coming up tomorrow morning.
  • They steal joy from projects. Doing something because you have to finish it to avoid getting in trouble is not nearly as joyful as doing something when it inspires you, or because you see the necessity in it and choose to put in the effort to work on it. And our brains are motivated by joy.
  • Since estimates are always wrong (ask any project manager), every project ends up in an impossible choice scenario. An impossible scenario that will trigger rejection sensitivity no matter which one you choose.
    • If you're ahead of schedule, do you deliver what you promised ahead of the required date - but potentially face criticism that you could have done better? Or do you increase the scope to meet the target date?
    • If you're behind schedule, do you reduce scope and disappoint people with the end result? Or do you pass the due date and disappoint people with the extra time it took you to finish?
  • They distort priority. Even if you come up with an important task, a big project, a new idea... You'll often put it off to meet your deadlines, because the urgency gets mistaken for importance and therefore gets prioritized. This takes away your feelings of autonomy, in addition to deprioritizing joy, so work begins to feel like an involuntary slog that you grind through to get to the thing you like "in the future" (aka task purgatory.)
  • They undervalue quality. When I was writing copy, someone would often ask "how long should a sales letter be?" And the answer was always, "exactly as long as it takes to sell the product, and not a word more." By prioritizing getting it finished over getting it right, we're often doing it at the wrong time and cutting corners to meet the wrong goal. And we like getting things right. We enjoy a good quality end result. I might not be detail-oriented but you can be dang sure I want the right big picture.
  • They waste time. Ever added more to a project because you had more time than you thought, only to end up adding things you didn't really need just to justify how long it was taking to finish? Yeah. THAT. We're really bad at estimating time, and we also feel really guilty when we take longer than instant ramen to do anything, so we always end up overcommitting when we set deadlines in the first place.

In short, deadlines and hard due dates compromise everything we value about achieving and completing our work.

We use them to exploit cortisol and adrenaline to force the completion of tasks we don't find joyful on timelines we know are arbitrary, so that our non-linear brains can fit into the linear systems that are the dominant force in the world (but not the only.)

Escaping the tyranny of time

So what is a person with a non-linear brain to do in a linear world, when there are things to get done? How can I do away with deadlines and due dates, but still accomplish things?

To figure this out, I looked to companies who had successfully done it - and to my surprise, I actually found a few.

Both Edgar and Gumroad have completely done away with deadlines and due dates in their product development and marketing campaign cycles.

People are given a project and tasks, and they do them... Until they're done.

When looking at how they managed to pull this off, there was one really important piece of the puzzle that everyone who ditched deadlines agreed on:

You can no longer tell people what you're doing.

Now, hear me out. I don't mean keep big secrets or silo communications or withhold information.

I mean, you can't tell your clients or other teams "hey, I'm doing this thing!"

Or "wow, look at this new feature coming up!"

Because once you do, they'll start asking when.

What do you do instead?

You complete something to the best of your ability, and THEN pass it along to the person who needs to touch it next - whether that's another team, or a client.

Edgar talked about this as "having the marketing team one development cycle behind our product team."

Basically, marketing didn't plan a campaign for a new feature until marketing had the new feature in their hands, and it was fully functioning and ready to roll out.

As long as you do this with no expectations of timely response or action from the other party, this is actually perfectly fine.

"Hey, we've got a new feature ready! When you get some time, did you want to plan a promotional campaign for it? Just let us know when to schedule the roll out, it's ready to go!"

That is a perfectly acceptable way to tell your marketing team about a new feature. It is, in fact, far better than telling your marketing team about an upcoming feature that is still in development and then botching the rollout and making both teams look bad to the client.

How can I escape the tyranny of time-bound work expectations and find a way to motivate myself to complete tasks without exploiting cortisol and adrenaline?

Here is my plan:

  1. Embrace monotropic focus. I'm really, really good at taking on projects and focusing on only that thing while I'm interested in it. I'm really, really bad at working on something a little bit every day. So, I'm going to start doing things as project blocks. Start to finish, I do a thing til I'm done it.
  2. Use thought and task inertia to my advantage. I don't have a deficit of attention, I have a surplus of attention that acts like a runaway freight train in whatever direction I aim it. When I start doing something, so much momentum and inertia builds up in that thought or task that changing to another thought or task is the difficult part. So, I'll minimize the times I need to interrupt that inertia. I'll plan work blocks so I can start a task and run with it until I run out of steam.
  3. I'll use non-linear tools to prioritize work. Time is no longer the primary deciding factor when prioritizing for the day, interest is. What I'm motivated to do will be easier to do, and will produce dopamine that will ironically also make the things I'm unmotivated to do even easier.
  4. I'll keep schedules. Due dates and deadlines might not be working for my brain right now, but I still need to show up on time to things. Schedules for regularly occurring events and appointments will stay in place. Only due dates and deadlines I've set for myself for tasks are going out the window on this one.
  5. I'm only announcing things once they're finished. Yeah, my team will know about things when they're in development as they need to - when I'd like them to act on it. But I'm no longer going to tell anyone something that's coming. I'm only communicating things that are here.

In practical terms

What will the next 100 days actually look like, on a day-to-day basis?

Meeting days are for meetings. No work other than meetings. It's pointless, my brain can't do it anyway. At best, I can tackle fiddly admin stuff.

Everything else goes on a list.

Every workday morning, I pull up the list (with the dates removed/hidden) and decide what I'm going to work on today, based on what feels both important and interesting. Time is not a factor in prioritizing. For the next 100 days, I will not weigh time in on this equation at all. Yes, even if I should.

This is an experiment.

Then I'll work on it until I am done, either by completing the project or needing to rest/recharge.

Some days, I'm genuinely only interested in fiddly admin busy work.

Other days I want to do deep, creative work.

My only rule is that when I sit down to work, I have to choose ONE task that feels interesting and actually start it. The rest is between me and my neurotransmitters.

As I go, I'll log the results and share updates with you on an as-inspired basis. At the end, if I feel like it, I'll share the full experiment results and what I'm incorporating going forward.

100 days without deadlines, starting now.

How do you think it's going to go?

What do you think you'll change, based on what I've shared here?

Share in the comments. Let's discuss!

Resources I used to write this post:
Neurodiversity resources:
Monotropism:
About deadlines:
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