deadlines

I've been thinking about imposing deadlines on myself lately, or I suppose it would be more accurate to write that I've been thinking about delving into what deadlines mean and whether to impose a few on myself in the near future. Sort of the same thing.

According to the various sources represented on Dictionary.com, a deadline is a kind of time limit. The origin of the word, however, is the line a prisoner could not cross without risk of being shot - the dead line - and the use of the term as synonymous with time limit can be traced to American newspaper jargon in the 1920s. Oh, those newspaper men and their words.

According to Wikipedia, a time limit is related to a milestone. Although it seems to me, simply glancing at the words that make up the compound words involved (deadline - time limit - milestone), a milestone is more of a marker on the way to somewhere else, and a deadline is more finite. Also, one doesn't impose milestones, one achieves milestones, where one imposes a deadline, however one may reach a deadline, in the same way one imposes a time limit or is restricted by a time limit and one may reach the limit. In other words, they're only sort of related. Silly Wikipedia.

But what are the advantages and disadvantages of imposing a few deadlines on oneself? On myself, to be specific. I've been out of grad school for almost a year and four months, and the last deadline I had and stuck to, really, was April 14, 2008: the day I turned in my thesis to my advisor. Three days later than she and I had originally agreed upon. (It was due to the department on the 16th, and I have a master's degree to prove that my advisor read my final draft the day I gave it to her.) Well, no, actually the last deadline I had was for my PhD applications. But the thesis was way bigger, I can say now that I'm on the other side of both of them. And I know there will be other non-self-imposed deadlines in my future, but I've been wondering if I'm sort of craving a date and a project to strive for in a manner that feels more important than "I need to submit something that doesn't suck to my writing group in six weeks."

This doesn't answer the question. Should I give myself a few deadlines? Should I monitor my progress based on an arbitrarily chosen future date of completion?

Interesting blog on the topic from Thomas at Go College. He doesn't go into what would happen if there were no deadlines. Would he still be working at those undergraduate term papers? I bet the profs in question would remember him in that case...