Design Principle: Boost Productivity with Soft Deadlines and Small Goals
The Time Machine’s timer does more than remove distractions. It builds the habit of choosing a time for a small (but specific) goal to be achieved. This ‘soft deadline’ can trick us into ignoring to-do items beyond what we decide is most important right now.
Inside the Mind of a Master Procrastinator:
In this entertaining TED Talk Tim Urban explains how our brains interact with deadlines and why we should all see ourselves as procrastinators.
This talk helps explain how creating attainable deadlines with the Time Machine helps us achieve more, but more importantly saves us from a buildup of stress.
Our Brain’s Identical Reaction to Lack 0f Time, Sleep, Money, & Food… :
In this in-depth talk Professor Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard, MIT, Chicago) elaborates on the idea that attainable deadlines can have great benefits on our ability to “tunnel” our focus, but that a true lack of time causes us to lose control of our decisions.
By pairing a timeframe to a specific goal, the Time Machine helps us take advantage of “tunneling” focus, removing distractions from more than just our phones.
