"Self imposed deadlines never work because I know myself and I am a liar!" is something a client said to me today (after having seen it on Twitter or Tumblr or something) and I laughed and cried because:
wow, the truth of that
and
wow, the truth of that.
This is not a post asking you to abandon deadlines, self imposed or otherwise. You need them sometimes. They most importantly put temporal boundaries on projects - and if you're someone who likes to tinker in the sandbox until the last second before you have to leave the park, this is an important step. With so many things, there is no clear or obvious done point - so we have to create one with a deadline.
But! If you are stuck in a cycle of:
feel overwhelmed about tasks on your plate now and tasks that are coming
wildly guess at a deadline that you (or your anxiety self) feels like is reasonable, or at the least, will make you feel like a human being who does things and not a sentient trash pile who happens to be in grad school
work at that deadline for a minute
realize that for whatever reason it isn't happening
give up
or set new, farther deadline - say, next Friday!
repeat
then it might be time to try something new. Because if you set a bunch of deadlines, and then don't hit them, and then keep setting deadlines, eventually you reinforce the idea to yourself that time boundaries don't matter unless someone else gets really mad at you for missing them, or unless you have severe consequences for missing it. And that's a tough way to live.
So instead, try something new: try aiming for a commitment like:
working for one hour every week day on this project
one pom of freewriting when you get to your desk for the day
picking three things from your to do list and working on any of those before you start something else
accountability posts four out of five days next week (*wink*)
If putting more and more pressure to get to done isn't work, try adding some focus on the process. If you work for an hour on a project every day, it might not be done on Friday, but it will be some place new. If you commit to doing one of your scary three things first, you might just get the momentum to keep going. But focusing on what you'll do regularly, rather than the amount of time you have left to do something, you build the habits that make the deadlines happen. A deadline of this Friday doesn't magically build you a writing practice - it just puts some pressure on. So try the practice first, and then add the pressure.