Not Dead

Most of our day-to-day tasks - buying birthday gifts, getting an annual check, writing thank-you cards to teachers before the end of the school term, filling of tax return, applying ethical approval for clinical trials, redeeming rebate - are set with deadlines. Such deadline always looms large when it's around the corner. We begin to become a little edgy. Okay, we panic. We sigh and moan and wish we had more time.

Deadlines, by definition, are deadly. As deadly as the MERS-coronavirus. There is no vaccine to prevent it, and there are no drugs to treat it.

Yesterday, my colleague posted his update on Facebook after fighting with time to admit patients to hospitals, barely beating his deadline to submit research grant proposal. "Had a hectic day running between PCR and CPR." That's what he says. Which is basically medical doctor gobbledygook for "mission impossible." Within half day, there were a dozen replies. Condolence. Praise. Encouragement. Long enough to fill a page, I swear. We all know it's tough.

What is it that makes deadlines so dreadful? And why can't we go without deadlines? How much better would our world be if deadlines are scrapped?

Actually, no. Merits of deadline are backed up by behaviour science. For evidence that supports the use of deadlines, consider the British example of the Economic and Social Research Council, which means funding opportunity for university researchers interested in areas of global economics, security and education. At one time, the council decided to remove research grant submission deadlines and accept proposals on a rolling basis. And that, in essence, means more freedom for researchers who won't need to submit proposals on a fixed day (like my poor friend); they can simply submit a proposal whenever they want. No more deadly deadlines. It looks as if that's a big improvement, at least in terms of flexibility.

But wait: do we really know what happened after this new policy?

Proposal submissions plummeted by 15 to 20 percent.