Defeating the Potentially Deleterious Effects of Externally Imposed Deadlines: Practitioners’ Rules-of-Thumb

Abstract

The authors interviewed people to determine whether they devise strategies to offset the damaging effect that externally imposed deadlines have on intrinsic motivation. Interviewees’ “practitioners’ rules-of-thumb” strategies were consistent with the tenets of self-determination theory and were tested empirically in three experiments. In each of the experiments, complete or partial self-determination of initially externally imposed time limits negated the otherwise deleterious effects of deadlines on intrinsic motivation. Participants who actively co-opted a deadline as their own (Experiment 1), who self-imposed sub deadlines within an overall externally imposed deadline (Experiment 2), and who self-imposed more stringent deadlines than those imposed externally (Experiment 3) spent significantly more free-choice time engaged in target tasks than did their counterparts in externally imposed deadline conditions where no self-determination was permitted. Given the ubiquity of deadlines, the results can directly be implemented by both deadline setters and deadline recipients to protect people’s interest in their work.