Maroš Servátka of Australia’s Macquarie Business School and three coresearchers—Stephen Knowles, Trudy Sullivan, and Murat Genç, all from New Zealand’s University of Otago—invited 3,276 people to take a short online survey in exchange for a $10 donation to charity. Some participants were given a one-week deadline, some were given a one-month deadline, and some were given no deadline at all. Members of the last group returned more surveys than those in the other two groups did, and they also responded more quickly. The conclusion: To keep people from procrastinating, don’t give them a deadline.
A version of this article appeared in the September–October 2022 issue of Harvard Business Review.
