It’s not because there is anything earth-shattering in the paragraphs that follow.
It’s not because something might happen to you if you don’t.
And it’s not because I’m trying to trick you into reading it.
Well, maybe that last statement is not quite true. But blame Dan Ariely, not me.
One of the letters Dan received in this week’s Wall Street Journal asked the following:
Dear Dan, I work in human resources, and I’m trying to motivate our employees to complete a short online training program. The training is very simple, but no one seems to get it done. Should I give them a deadline of a month to finish it, or will that just cause more delay? —Archie
And here was part of Dan’s response:
Deadlines are very important—when we have lots of demands on our time we need deadlines to help us set priorities. However, people also use deadlines as a source of information about the complexity of the task. In one study, researchers found that giving people longer deadlines led them to believe that the task was much harder, which in turn increased how much they procrastinated. So for an easy task like completing an online training program, set a short-term deadline, so that people will think the task is easy to accomplish and get right to it.
So I thought I would try to apply Dan’s reasoning to how I could motivate people to read my blog.
Reading my blog is an easy task (some would say mindless), so to reinforce such an idea and to encourage you to read it, I have set a very short-term deadline.
And so hopefully you got right to it, and it likely took you less than two minutes to complete the reading.
Now you are ready to move on to other tasks, such as trying to figure out how you can regain the minute or two of your life you just lost reading this blog post.
I’m not sure if you ever will, but at least let me try to make it up to you with this:
Borden's Blather 
Read within 30 seconds….I respect authority.
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I’m glad I didn’t take up too much of your time…
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Done. Now, do I have to copy this and send to 15 people? Hahaha…
Deadlines are important. I like to set a reasonable deadline – not too long and not too short. But if the deadline is too long, people often wait the last minute to do it. Too short, and they complain.
Have a nice day.
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Thanks, Jomz. I agree, deadlines are often times the only way things get done. I can give you 15 days to send this to 15 people. 😀
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🙂 In regards to deadlines, the same came be said in the area of producing a blog post.
If it was not for deadlines, I would have been unable to set aside the time to produce content for my blog on a weekly basis.
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I’m the same way with my daily posts. If I hadn’t set those midnight deadlines, I probably would have missed a few.
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Your title was such a hook that I read it immediately. Well written!
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click bait! thanks for reading.
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I read quickly. Thanks for the reward at the end. I know I do procrastinate if I have a longer deadline. I work better under pressure (or perhaps it is the way I excuse my behavior).
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I’m the same way; things tend to get done just in time by the deadline, no matter when the deadline was set.
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I didn’t read because of the title, but I saw your page ‘blogging’ and hoped to learn more about the techniques.
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what sort of techniques were you looking for with respect to blogging?
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How to make pages with names. When I first started I could put ‘categories’ but that has disappeared.
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I’m not much into the techy side of WordPress, but the categories may be something that comes with the theme that you use. I’ve found the WordPress community willing to help with such issues. One person I follow is Jomz at https://maurusrealm.wordpress.com/2019/07/25/the-importance-of-a-follow-button-for-wordpress-blogs/ who might be of some help.
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Thank you for this.
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