How hard are you working now to graduate? If you are like most people, you either slow down considerably or stop completely. Because you still have two weeks to finish. It's been a long time - and you were actually almost done.

Research shows that – after we've breathed a sigh of relief because the pressure is over – we're really bad at using the extra time we've been given in a sensible way. And so we end up fighting the same problems again: The same stress, the same time pressure and the same feeling of not being fully prepared. Now just another week, month or a whole year has passed.

There are three reasons why we don't take advantage of extra time

So why are we wasting extra time like that and what can we do about it? Psychology Today has an answer to that. First, however, we need to understand why we don't take advantage of extra time.

According to Psychology Today, there are three problems:

Problem number 1: We lose motivation
Your motivation to reach a goal increases as the distance to the goal decreases. The more the distance to the goal decreases, the greater the motivation to achieve it. This applies regardless of whether you are a guinea pig chasing a piece of cheese or whether you are a salesperson who is close to reaching his sales goal.

Psychologists call this largely unconscious behavior the Goal Looms Larger Effect, referring to the fact that deadlines and goals that are close subconsciously "look bigger" and are therefore given greater importance or weight. Then if you move a deadline, the goal suddenly seems less important and is quickly overshadowed by other goals or deadlines that are more urgent.

Problem number 2: We drag out the time
If you are among those who think they work better under pressure, now is the time to follow along. For you in particular, a postponed deadline actually causes even greater problems than others. Without the immediate deadline, you run the risk of completely stalling with a task.

For as Heidi Grant Halvorson signs Psychology Today:

"Psychologically, saying your work is better under pressure makes zero sense, because "pressure" is just another way of saying "just barely sufficient time to complete whatever I'm doing." How can less time help you do a better job? This is like claiming that you are more rested when you give yourself fewer hours to sleep.

It's really far more accurate to say that if you are a procrastinator, you work because there is pressure. Without pressure, you don't work.”

Pushing deadlines, thereby eliminating the pressure, can therefore be completely disastrous for you, who work best at the last minute.

Problem number 3: We are bad at judging how long things take
Psychologists call this the "planning fallacy" - a general tendency to underestimate how long things take. The tendency is due to a number of psychological reasons, often called biases:

1. We fail to take our own previous experiences into account. Even though we have arranged a family party several times, we forget every time that Aunt Karen is always late, and that we therefore have to wait half an hour to put the food on the table.
2. When we plan, we tend to plan based on the most optimistic scenario. Even though we know very well that there is a high probability that something will go wrong, when e.g. are many people involved or a project must go through a large number of phases.
3. We do not consider how long each part of a task takes. Eg. when you have to paint a room, you might imagine how quickly you swing the paint roller. Which doesn't take very long. But you easily forget that you first have to move all the furniture, uncover sockets and paint the edges. (Read more about this here)

How to make the most of a postponed deadline

After all, deadlines are postponed for a reason: so that you can have time to finish. But if you don't have a conscious strategy for how you want to get around the three problems above, there is a high probability that in two weeks, when the deadline is looming again, you will have as much difficulty reaching it as you had before two weeks ago.

So what can you do to take advantage of the extra time you've been gifted with? Here are two strategies you can use.

Strategy No. 1: Break your big project into smaller sub-goals

By dividing your project into smaller parts, you kill two birds with one stone and combat both problem 1 and problem 2. You maintain both motivation and pressure, thus ensuring that even procrastinators get something done. Distribute your sub-goals strategically over time and make sure they have real meaning. If it doesn't matter if you miss your deadline, it's not a real deadline.

Researchers suggest that many of us understand this implicitly. Dan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch, show in one of their studies that only 27 % of students who had to submit three assignments during a semester submitted all three assignments on the last day. The vast majority of students previously set deadlines for one or more of the assignments. And half of the students chose to distribute the tasks equally over the semester. Those who did this turned in better assignments and got higher grades.

Strategy No. 2: Thorough planning

To solve problem number 3, which affects the ability to plan realistically, you need to be very deliberate when planning your project. You must pay particular attention to the following:

1. Consider how long it has taken to complete a similar project in the past.
2. Try to identify where your project can go wrong (ie not following the plan).
3. Break the project down into all the steps you need to complete in order to finish, and estimate how long it will take to complete each step.

Without a good strategy and knowledge of your biases, it is almost impossible not to fall into these traps. But if you implement the two solutions described above, everything speaks for you that, the next time a deadline is pushed, you will actually use your extra time for something sensible.