all assignments are due tomorrow fail

least

________

post/air mail

________

short

________

cash

the fire place

________

an excursion

________

one’s own

________

chance

schedule

________

accident

________

instance

________

cheque

a change

________

other words

________

a trip/tour

________

a good/bad manner

the move

________

once

________

private

________

All assignments are due tomorrow _______________ .

2

A computer chooses the lottery numbers _______________ .

3

Our house has been _______________ for over two months but we haven’t been able to sell it yet.

4

Everyone was _______________ of shock after the devastating news.

5

I was _______________ for words when I was told I had won the prize.

6

The roadworks _______________ are responsible for the traffic jams.

7

I can't go out tonight. I’m feeling a bit _______________ .

8

The train is _______________ . It will be pulling in any minute now.

9

Dianne was refused entry to the club because she was _______________ .

10

Final - year students are _______________a lot of to pass their exams.

11

I have bought this gym equipment _______________ . I can return it within fifteen days.

12

My brother faints _______________ blood.

13

My wife isn’t here at the moment because she’s away _______________ .

at a glace

on the road

in order

for granted

in common

on arrival

at heart

in some respects

Although he seems rather abrupt at times, he is very kind_____________________.

2

You should not take it _____________________ that your parents will always support you.

3

Everything was_____________________ and ready to be inspected.

4

_____________________, the earthquake doesn't seem to have caused any serious damage.

5

We were_____________________ for two days before we reached our destination.

6

_____________________ at the train station, they went straight to the platform.

7

Even though I don't agree with your overall argument, I do agree with you_____________________.

8

My brother and I don’t have anything_____________________.

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4 Tips for Completing Your Homework On Time

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• B.A., English, University of Michigan

Homework, a necessary evil according to many teachers, has a lot of students tied up in knots. Some students can never seem to get things turned in on time. In fact, many students do not even realize that they  have  homework until a friend from class texts them or they overhear someone in the halls talking about Ms. So-and-so's terrible, no-good, awful, horrifying worksheet for Chemistry that is due the next day. These five tips for completing your homework on time, however, should help you get that homework finished on time. 

Tip 1: Rely On a Planning System

Most of you by now are well acquainted with a homework planner. It has the dates, the school subjects you are taking, and a whole lot of blank space to write down your homework assignments. Use these planners if you have them. Writing with an actual pencil or pen may seem almost archaic what with technology virtually doing everything for us, but the kinesthetic movement of writing down an assignment into one of those little squares (Language Arts test tomorrow - STUDY TONIGHT), will actually help solidify that homework in your brain.

Plus, when you are packing up to go home at the end of the school day, all you have to do is open up that planner to see which books, folders, and binders need to go home with you so you will not miss out anything that you need to do that evening.

Some people  hate  using planners. They'd rather walk on a pile of crushed glass than actually write something down in a planner. That's quite all right. One student kept a wadded up piece of paper in his pocket where he'd scrawl his assignments. It worked for him, so it was fine. For those of you not keen on planners or crumpled up notes, your phone can come in really handy. Just download a productivity app and type your assignments in there. Or, keep track of all the work due in the notes section of your phone. Or, snap a picture of the homework board in each teacher's class before you head out into the hallway. Or, if you are really dead-set against anything planner-related, then just send yourself a text after each class with your homework assignments for the night.

No matter which planning system you prefer, use it. Check off each item once you get it in your backpack. Your brain can only process so much information at a time, so you absolutely must write your homework down if you plan to complete it on time. 

Tip 2: Prioritize Your Homework Assignments

All assignments are not created equal. It's strongly recommended you use a prioritizing system when you sit down at home with your homework. Try a system a little something like this:

• Examples: Studying for a major test coming up tomorrow. Finishing a major project due tomorrow. Writing an essay worth a LOT of points that is due tomorrow. 
• Examples:  Studying for a quiz coming up tomorrow. Completing a homework sheet that is due tomorrow. Reading a chapter that is due tomorrow. 
• Examples: Studying for a spelling test that will occur on Friday. Writing a blog and posting it on the class board by Friday. Finish a book upon which you will take a quiz on Friday.
• Examples: Reviewing chapters for the midterm exam. Working on an on-going project, research paper, or long assignment due at the end of the quarter. Completing a packet that isn't due for two weeks. 

Once you've prioritized the work you have to do, complete all the 1's first, then the 2's, moving down as you go. That way, if you find yourself pressed for time because Great-Grandma decided to stop over for family dinner and your mom insisted you spend the evening playing bridge with her despite the fact that you have hours of homework ahead of you, then you will not have missed anything vitally important to your grade. 

Tip 3: Get the Worst Assignment Over With First

So, maybe you absolutely hate writing essays (But, why, though when all you have to do is follow these essay tips? ) and you have a major essay staring you in the face that  must  be completed before tomorrow. You also have to study for a major math test, complete a social studies blog by Friday, study for the ACT  next month, and finish up your science worksheet from class. Your "1" assignments would be the essay and the math test. Your "2" assignment is the science worksheet, the "3" assignment is that blog, and the "4" assignment is studying for the ACT. 

Ordinarily, you would start with the science worksheet because you  love  science, but that would be a big mistake. Start with those "1" assignments and knock out that essay first. Why? Because you hate it. And completing the worst assignment first gets it off your mind, out of your homework cache, and makes everything that comes after it appears to be really, really easy. It will be an absolute  joy  to complete that science worksheet once you have written the essay. Why rob yourself of joy? 

Then, once you've completed the stuff due first, you can focus on putting in a little bit of time on the ACT. Easy peasy.

Tip 4: Take Planned Breaks

Some people believe that sitting down to complete homework means that you literally park your behind in a chair and you don't move it for the next four thousand hours or so. That is one of the worst study ideas in history. Your brain only has the capacity to stay focused for about 45 minutes (maybe even less for some of you) before it goes on the fritz and starts wanting to make you get up and dance the Roger Rabbit. So, schedule your study time with breaks actually built in . Work for 45 minutes, then take a 10-minute break to do whatever it is people your age like to do. Then, rinse and repeat. It looks a little something like this:

Homework Time:

• 45 minutes: Work on "1" assignments, starting with the absolute worst.
• 10 minutes: Get a snack, play Pokemon Go!, surf Instagram
• 45 minutes: Work on "1" assignments again. You know you didn't finish.
• 10 minutes: Do some jumping jacks, dance the Macarena, polish your nails.
• 45 minutes: Work on "2" assignments and maybe even finish with any 3s and 4s. Put everything in your backpack.

Completing your homework on time is a learned skill. It requires some discipline and not everyone is naturally disciplined. So, you have to practice checking that you have everything you need for homework when you are still at school, prioritizing your work, plunging into the assignments you loathe, and taking planned breaks. Isn't your grade worth it?

You bet it is. 

• Tips for Studying for a Midterm Exam
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• 8 Study Tips To Prepare for a Test
• 7 Study Tips Smart Students Use
• What's Your Learning Language?
• Effective Reading Strategies
• How To Take Notes
• 10 Ways to Maximize Your Study Time
• 5 Tips for Studying for Final Exams in College
• 6 Steps for Self-Discipline When You Study
• How to Create a Rubric in 6 Steps
• How to Study for a Vocabulary Quiz
• 20 Creative Study Methods
• 7 Motivational Quotes to Memorize Before the Big Exam
• How to Use Multiple Intelligences to Study for a Test
• Learn About the Top 9 Places to Study

Daniel Wong

30 Tips to Stop Procrastinating and Find Motivation to Do Homework

Updated on June 6, 2023 By Daniel Wong 44 Comments

To stop procrastinating on homework, you need to find motivation to do the homework in the first place.

But first, you have to overcome feeling too overwhelmed to even start.

You know what it feels like when everything hits you at once, right?

You have three tests to study for and a math assignment due tomorrow.

And you’ve got a history report due the day after.

You tell yourself to get down to work. But with so much to do, you feel overwhelmed.

So you procrastinate.

You check your social media feed, watch a few videos, and get yourself a drink. But you know that none of this is bringing you closer to getting the work done.

Does this sound familiar?

Don’t worry – you are not alone. Procrastination is a problem that everyone faces, but there are ways around it.

By following the tips in this article, you’ll be able to overcome procrastination and consistently find the motivation to do the homework .

So read on to discover 30 powerful tips to help you stop procrastinating on your homework.

Enter your email below to download a PDF summary of this article. The PDF contains all the tips found here, plus  3 exclusive bonus tips that you’ll only find in the PDF.

How to stop procrastinating and motivate yourself to do your homework.

Procrastination when it comes to homework isn’t just an issue of laziness or a lack of motivation .

The following tips will help you to first address the root cause of your procrastination and then implement strategies to keep your motivation levels high.

1. Take a quiz to see how much you procrastinate.

The first step to changing your behavior is to become more self-aware.

How often do you procrastinate? What kinds of tasks do you tend to put off? Is procrastination a small or big problem for you?

To answer these questions, I suggest that you take this online quiz designed by Psychology Today .

2. Figure out why you’re procrastinating.

Procrastination is a complex issue that involves multiple factors.

Stop thinking of excuses for not doing your homework , and figure out what’s keeping you from getting started.

Are you procrastinating because:

• You’re not sure you’ll be able to solve all the homework problems?
• You’re subconsciously rebelling against your teachers or parents?
• You’re not interested in the subject or topic?
• You’re physically or mentally tired?
• You’re waiting for the perfect time to start?
• You don’t know where to start?

Once you’ve identified exactly why you’re procrastinating, you can pick out the tips in this article that will get to the root of the problem.

3. Write down what you’re procrastinating on.

Students tend to procrastinate when they’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed.

But you might be surprised to discover that simply by writing down the specific tasks you’re putting off, the situation will feel more manageable.

It’s a quick solution, and it makes a real difference.

Give it a try and you’ll be less likely to procrastinate.

4. Put your homework on your desk.

Here’s an even simpler idea.

Many times, the hardest part of getting your homework done is getting started.

It doesn’t require a lot of willpower to take out your homework and put it on your desk.

But once it’s sitting there in front of you, you’ll be much closer to actually getting down to work.

5. Break down the task into smaller steps.

This one trick will make any task seem more manageable.

For example, if you have a history report to write, you could break it down into the following steps:

• Read the history textbook
• Do online research
• Organize the information
• Create an outline
• Write the introduction
• Write the body paragraphs
• Write the conclusion
• Edit and proofread the report

Focus on just one step at a time. This way, you won’t need to motivate yourself to write the whole report at one go.

This is an important technique to use if you want to study smart and get more done .

6. Create a detailed timeline with specific deadlines.

As a follow-up to Point #5, you can further combat procrastination by creating a timeline with specific deadlines.

Using the same example above, I’ve added deadlines to each of the steps:

• Jan 30 th : Read the history textbook
• Feb 2 nd : Do online research
• Feb 3 rd : Organize the information
• Feb 5 th : Create an outline
• Feb 8 th : Write the introduction
• Feb 12 th : Write the body paragraphs
• Feb 14 th : Write the conclusion
• Feb 16 th : Edit and proofread the report

Assigning specific dates creates a sense of urgency, which makes it more likely that you’ll keep to the deadlines.

7. Spend time with people who are focused and hardworking.

Jim Rohn famously said that you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

If you hang out with people who are motivated and hardworking, you’ll become more like them.

Likewise, if you hang out with people who continually procrastinate, you’ll become more like them too.

Motivation to do homework naturally increases when you surround yourself with the right people.

So choose your friends wisely. Find homework buddies who will influence you positively to become a straight-A student who leads a balanced life.

That doesn’t mean you can’t have any fun! It just means that you and your friends know when it’s time to get down to work and when it’s time to enjoy yourselves.

8. Tell at least two or three people about the tasks you plan to complete.

When you tell others about the tasks you intend to finish, you’ll be more likely to follow through with your plans.

This is called “accountability,” and it kicks in because you want to be seen as someone who keeps your word.

So if you know about this principle, why not use it to your advantage?

You could even ask a friend to be your accountability buddy. At the beginning of each day, you could text each other what you plan to work on that day.

Then at the end of the day, you could check in with each other to see if things went according to plan.

9. Change your environment .

Maybe it’s your environment that’s making you feel sluggish.

When you’re doing your homework, is your super-comfortable bed just two steps away? Or is your distracting computer within easy reach?

If your environment is part of your procrastination problem, then change it.

Sometimes all you need is a simple change of scenery. Bring your work to the dining room table and get it done there. Or head to a nearby café to complete your report.

10. Talk to people who have overcome their procrastination problem.

If you have friends who consistently win the battle with procrastination, learn from their experience.

What was the turning point for them? What tips and strategies do they use? What keeps them motivated?

Find all this out, and then apply the information to your own situation.

11. Decide on a reward to give yourself after you complete your task.

“Planned” rewards are a great way to motivate yourself to do your homework.

The reward doesn’t have to be something huge.

For instance, you might decide that after you finish 10 questions of your math homework, you get to watch your favorite TV show.

Or you might decide that after reading one chapter of your history textbook, you get to spend 10 minutes on Facebook.

By giving yourself a reward, you’ll feel more motivated to get through the task at hand.

12. Decide on a consequence you’ll impose on yourself if you don’t meet the deadline.

It’s important that you decide on what the consequence will be before you start working toward your goal.

As an example, you could tell your younger brother that you’ll give him $1 for every deadline you don’t meet (see Point #6).

Or you could decide that you’ll delete one game from your phone for every late homework submission.

Those consequences would probably be painful enough to help you get down to work, right?

13. Visualize success.

Take 30 seconds and imagine how you’ll feel when you finish your work.

What positive emotions will you experience?

Will you feel a sense of satisfaction from getting all your work done?

Will you relish the extra time on your hands when you get your homework done fast and ahead of time?

This simple exercise of visualizing success may be enough to inspire you to start doing your assignment.

14. Visualize the process it will take to achieve that success.

Even more important than visualizing the outcome is visualizing the process it will take to achieve that outcome.

Research shows that focusing on the process is critical to success. If you’re procrastinating on a task, take a few moments to think about what you’ll need to do to complete it.

Visualize the following:

• What resources you’ll need
• Who you can turn to for help
• How long the task will take
• Where you’ll work on the task
• The joy you’ll experience as you make progress

This kind of visualization is like practice for your mind.

Once you understand what’s necessary to achieve your goal, you’ll find that it’s much easier to get down to work with real focus. This is key to doing well in school .

15. Write down why you want to complete the task.

You’ll be more motivated when you’re clear about why you want to accomplish something.

To motivate yourself to do your homework, think about all the ways in which it’s a meaningful task.

So take a couple of minutes to write down the reasons. Here are some possible ones:

• Learn useful information
• Master the topic
• Enjoy a sense of accomplishment when you’ve completed the task
• Become a more focused student
• Learn to embrace challenges
• Fulfill your responsibility as a student
• Get a good grade on the assignment

16. Write down the negative feelings you’ll have if you don’t complete the task.

If you don’t complete the assignment, you might feel disappointed or discouraged. You might even feel as if you’ve let your parents or your teacher – or even yourself – down.

It isn’t wise to dwell on these negative emotions for too long. But by imagining how you’ll feel if you don’t finish the task, you’ll realize how important it is that you get to work.

17. Do the hardest task first.

Most students will choose to do the easiest task first, rather than the hardest one. But this approach isn’t effective because it leaves the worst for last.

It’s more difficult to find motivation to do homework in less enjoyable subjects.

As Brian Tracy says , “Eat that frog!” By this, he means that you should always get your most difficult task out of the way at the beginning of the day.

If math is your least favorite subject, force yourself to complete your math homework first.

After doing so, you’ll feel a surge of motivation from knowing it’s finished. And you won’t procrastinate on your other homework because it will seem easier in comparison.

(On a separate note, check out these tips on how to get better at math if you’re struggling.)

18. Set a timer when doing your homework.

I recommend that you use a stopwatch for every homework session. (If you prefer, you could also use this online stopwatch or the Tomato Timer .)

Start the timer at the beginning of the session, and work in 30- to 45-minute blocks.

Using a timer creates a sense of urgency, which will help you fight off your urge to procrastinate.

When you know you only have to work for a short session, it will be easier to find motivation to complete your homework.

Tell yourself that you need to work hard until the timer goes off, and then you can take a break. (And then be sure to take that break!)

19. Eliminate distractions.

Here are some suggestions on how you can do this:

• Delete all the games and social media apps on your phone
• Turn off all notifications on your phone
• Mute your group chats
• Archive your inactive chats
• Turn off your phone, or put it on airplane mode
• Put your phone at least 10 feet away from you
• Turn off the Internet access on your computer
• Use an app like Freedom to restrict your Internet usage
• Put any other distractions (like food, magazines and books unrelated to your homework) at the other end of the room
• Unplug the TV
• Use earplugs if your surroundings are noisy

20. At the start of each day, write down the two to three Most Important Tasks (MITs) you want to accomplish.

This will enable you to prioritize your tasks. As Josh Kaufman explains , a Most Important Task (MIT) is a critical task that will help you to get significant results down the road.

Not all tasks are equally important. That’s why it’s vital that you identify your MITs, so that you can complete those as early in the day as possible.

What do you most need to get done today? That’s an MIT.

Get to work on it, then feel the satisfaction that comes from knowing it’s out of the way.

21. Focus on progress instead of perfection.

Perfectionism can destroy your motivation to do homework and keep you from starting important assignments.

Some students procrastinate because they’re waiting for the perfect time to start.

Others do so because they want to get their homework done perfectly. But they know this isn’t really possible – so they put off even getting started.

What’s the solution?

To focus on progress instead of perfection.

There’s never a perfect time for anything. Nor will you ever be able to complete your homework perfectly. But you can do your best, and that’s enough.

So concentrate on learning and improving, and turn this into a habit that you implement whenever you study .

22. Get organized.

Procrastination is common among students who are disorganized.

When you can’t remember which assignment is due when or which tests you have coming up, you’ll naturally feel confused. You’ll experience school- and test-related stress .

This, in turn, will lead to procrastination.

That’s why it’s crucial that you get organized. Here are some tips for doing this:

• Don’t rely on your memory ; write everything down
• Keep a to-do list
• Use a student planner
• Use a calendar and take note of important dates like exams, project due dates, school holidays , birthdays, and family events
• At the end of each day, plan for the following day
• Use one binder or folder for each subject or course
• Do weekly filing of your loose papers, notes, and old homework
• Throw away all the papers and notes you no longer need

23. Stop saying “I have to” and start saying “I choose to.”

When you say things like “I have to write my essay” or “I have to finish my science assignment,” you’ll probably feel annoyed. You might be tempted to complain about your teachers or your school .

What’s the alternative?

To use the phrase “I choose to.”

The truth is, you don’t “have” to do anything.

You can choose not to write your essay; you’ll just run the risk of failing the class.

You can choose not to do your science assignment; you’ll just need to deal with your angry teacher.

When you say “I choose to do my homework,” you’ll feel empowered. This means you’ll be more motivated to study and to do what you ought to.

24. Clear your desk once a week.

Clutter can be demotivating. It also causes stress , which is often at the root of procrastination.

Hard to believe? Give it a try and see for yourself.

By clearing your desk, you’ll reduce stress and make your workspace more organized.

So set a recurring appointment to organize your workspace once a week for just 10 minutes. You’ll receive huge benefits in the long run!

25. If a task takes two minutes or less to complete, do it now.

This is a principle from David Allen’s bestselling book, Getting Things Done .

You may notice that you tend to procrastinate when many tasks pile up. The way to prevent this from happening is to take care of the small but important tasks as soon as you have time.

Here are some examples of small two-minute tasks that you should do once you have a chance:

• Replying to your project group member’s email
• Picking up anything on the floor that doesn’t belong there
• Asking your parents to sign a consent form
• Filing a graded assignment
• Making a quick phone call
• Writing a checklist
• Sending a text to schedule a meeting
• Making an online purchase that doesn’t require further research

26. Finish one task before starting on the next.

You aren’t being productive when you switch between working on your literature essay, social studies report, and physics problem set – while also intermittently checking your phone.

Research shows that multitasking is less effective than doing one thing at a time. Multitasking may even damage your brain !

When it comes to overcoming procrastination, it’s better to stick with one task all the way through before starting on the next one.

You’ll get a sense of accomplishment when you finish the first assignment, which will give you a boost of inspiration as you move on to the next one.

27. Build your focus gradually.

You can’t win the battle against procrastination overnight; it takes time. This means that you need to build your focus progressively.

If you can only focus for 10 minutes at once, that’s fine. Start with three sessions of 10 minutes a day. After a week, increase it to three sessions of 15 minutes a day, and so on.

As the weeks go by, you’ll become far more focused than when you first started. And you’ll soon see how great that makes you feel.

28. Before you start work, write down three things you’re thankful for.

Gratitude improves your psychological health and increases your mental strength .

These factors are linked to motivation. The more you practice gratitude, the easier it will be to find motivation to do your homework. As such, it’s less likely that you’ll be a serial procrastinator.

Before you get down to work for the day, write down three things you’re thankful for. These could be simple things like good health, fine weather, or a loving family.

You could even do this in a “gratitude journal,” which you can then look back on whenever you need a shot of fresh appreciation for the good things in your life.

Either way, this short exercise will get you in the right mindset to be productive.

29. Get enough sleep.

For most people, this means getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night. And teenagers need 8 to 10 hours of sleep a night to function optimally.

What does sleep have to do with procrastination?

More than you might realize.

It’s almost impossible to feel motivated when you’re tired. And when you’re low on energy, your willpower is depleted too.

That’s why you give in to the temptation of Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube videos more easily when you’re sleep-deprived.

Here are ways to get more sleep , and sleep better too:

• Create a bedtime routine
• Go to sleep at around the same time every night
• Set a daily alarm as a reminder to go to bed
• Exercise regularly (but not within a few hours of bedtime)
• Make your bedroom as dark as possible
• Remove or switch off all electronic devices before bedtime
• Avoid caffeine at least six hours before bedtime
• Use an eye mask and earplugs

30. Schedule appointments with yourself to complete your homework.

These appointments are specific blocks of time reserved for working on a report, assignment, or project. Scheduling appointments is effective because it makes the task more “official,” so you’re more likely to keep the appointment.

For example, you could schedule appointments such as:

• Jan 25 th , 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm: Math assignment
• Jan 27 th , 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm: Online research for social studies project
• Jan 28 th , 4:30 pm – 5:00 pm: Write introduction for English essay

Transform homework procrastination into homework motivation

Procrastination is a problem we all face.

But given that you’ve read all the way to here, I know you’re committed to overcoming this problem.

And now that you’re armed with these tips, you have all the tools you need to become more disciplined and focused .

By the way, please don’t feel as if you need to implement all the tips at once, because that would be too overwhelming.

Instead, I recommend that you focus on just a couple of tips a week, and make gradual progress. No rush!

Over time, you’ll realize that your habit of procrastination has been replaced by the habit of getting things done.

Now’s the time to get started on that process of transformation. 🙂

Like this article? Please share it with your friends.

Images: Student and books , Homework , Group of students , Consequences , Why , Writing a list , Organized desk , Gratitude

January 19, 2016 at 11:53 am

Ur tips are rlly helpful. Thnkyou ! 🙂

January 19, 2016 at 1:43 pm

You’re welcome 🙂

August 29, 2018 at 11:21 am

Thanks very much

February 19, 2019 at 1:38 pm

The funny thing is while I was reading the first few steps of this article I was procrastinating on my homework….

November 12, 2019 at 12:44 pm

same here! but now I actually want to get my stuff done… huh

December 4, 2022 at 11:35 pm

May 30, 2023 at 6:26 am

October 25, 2023 at 11:35 am

fr tho i totally was but now I’m actually going to get started haha

June 6, 2020 at 6:04 am

I love your articles

January 21, 2016 at 7:07 pm

Thanks soo much. It’s almost like you could read my mind- when I felt so overwhelmed with the workload heap I had created for myself by procrastination, I know feel very motivated to tackle it out completely and replace that bad habit with the wonderful tips mentioned here! 🙂

January 21, 2016 at 8:04 pm

I’m glad to help 🙂

January 25, 2016 at 3:09 pm

You have shared great tips here. I especially like the point “Write down why you want to complete the task” because it is helpful to make us more motivated when we are clear about our goals

January 25, 2016 at 4:51 pm

Glad that you found the tips useful, John!

January 29, 2016 at 1:22 am

Thank you very much for your wonderful tips!!! ☺☺☺

January 29, 2016 at 10:41 am

It’s my joy to help, Kabir 🙂

February 3, 2016 at 12:57 pm

Always love your articles. Keep them up 🙂

February 3, 2016 at 1:21 pm

Thanks, Matthew 🙂

February 4, 2016 at 1:40 pm

There are quite a lot of things that you need to do in order to come out with flying colors while studying in a university away from your homeland. Procrastinating on homework is one of the major mistakes committed by students and these tips will help you to avoid them all and make yourself more efficient during your student life.

February 4, 2016 at 1:58 pm

Completely agreed, Leong Siew.

October 5, 2018 at 12:52 am

Wow! thank you very much, I love it .

November 2, 2018 at 10:45 am

You are helping me a lot.. thank you very much….😊

November 6, 2018 at 5:19 pm

I’m procrastinating by reading this

November 29, 2018 at 10:21 am

January 8, 2021 at 3:38 am

March 3, 2019 at 9:12 am

Daniel, your amazing information and advice, has been very useful! Please keep up your excellent work!

April 12, 2019 at 11:12 am

We should stop procrastinating.

September 28, 2019 at 5:19 pm

Thank you so much for the tips:) i’ve been procrastinating since i started high schools and my grades were really bad “F” but the tips have made me a straight A student again.

January 23, 2020 at 7:43 pm

Thanks for the tips, Daniel! They’re really useful! 😁

April 10, 2020 at 2:15 pm

I have always stood first in my class. But procrastination has always been a very bad habit of mine which is why I lost marks for late submission .As an excuse for finding motivation for studying I would spend hours on the phone and I would eventually procrastinate. So I tried your tips and tricks today and they really worked.i am so glad and thankful for your help. 🇮🇳Love from India🇮🇳

April 15, 2020 at 11:16 am

Well I’m gonna give this a shot it looks and sounds very helpful thank you guys I really needed this

April 16, 2020 at 9:48 pm

Daniel, your amazing information and advice, has been very useful! keep up your excellent work! May you give more useful content to us.

May 6, 2020 at 5:03 pm

nice article thanks for your sharing.

May 20, 2020 at 4:49 am

Thank you so much this helped me so much but I was wondering about like what if you just like being lazy and stuff and don’t feel like doing anything and you don’t want to tell anyone because you might annoy them and you just don’t want to add your problems and put another burden on theirs

July 12, 2020 at 1:55 am

I’ve read many short procrastination tip articles and always thought they were stupid or overlooking the actual problem. ‘do this and this’ or that and that, and I sit there thinking I CAN’T. This article had some nice original tips that I actually followed and really did make me feel a bit better. Cheers, diving into what will probably be a 3 hour case study.

August 22, 2020 at 10:14 pm

Nicely explain each tips and those are practical thanks for sharing. Dr.Achyut More

November 11, 2020 at 12:34 pm

Thanks a lot! It was very helpful!

November 15, 2020 at 9:11 am

I keep catching myself procrastinating today. I started reading this yesterday, but then I realized I was procrastinating, so I stopped to finish it today. Thank you for all the great tips.

November 30, 2020 at 5:15 pm

Woow this is so great. Thanks so much Daniel

December 3, 2020 at 3:13 am

These tips were very helpful!

December 18, 2020 at 11:54 am

Procrastination is a major problem of mine, and this, this is very helpful. It is very motivational, now I think I can complete my work.

December 28, 2020 at 2:44 pm

Daniel Wong: When you’re doing your homework, is your super-comfortable bed just two steps away? Me: Nope, my super-comfortable bed is one step away. (But I seriously can’t study anywhere else. If I go to the dining table, my mum would be right in front of me talking loudly on the phone with colleagues and other rooms is an absolute no. My mum doesn’t allow me to go outside. Please give me some suggestions. )

September 19, 2022 at 12:14 pm

I would try and find some noise cancelling headphones to play some classical music or get some earbuds to ignore you mum lol

March 1, 2021 at 5:46 pm

Thank you very much. I highly appreciate it.

May 12, 2023 at 3:38 am

This is great advice. My little niece is now six years old and I like to use those nice cheap child friendly workbooks with her. This is done in order to help her to learn things completely on her own. I however prefer to test her on her own knowledge however. After a rather quick demonstration in the lesson I then tend to give her two simple questions to start off with. And it works a treat. Seriously. I love it. She loves it. The exam questions are for her to answer on her own on a notepad. If she can, she will receive a gold medal and a box of sweets. If not she only gets a plastic toy. We do this all the time to help her understand. Once a week we spend up to thirty minutes in a math lesson on this technique for recalling the basic facts. I have had a lot of great success with this new age technique. So I’m going to carry on with it for now.

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How strict should you be? A guide to assignment due dates.

Be consistent in your approach to deadline flexibility, whether you never accept late work or are always willing to make an exception..

Colleges typically require instructors to include a calendar of assignment due dates in every course syllabus. But most syllabi also include a disclaimer that assignment deadlines are subject to change.  

So, how flexible should deadlines really be in a college course? 

Be Flexible, or be Rigid, but Always be Consistent 

Be consistent in your approach to deadline flexibility, whether you never accept late work or are always willing to make an exception. Nothing irritates strong students more than their instructor announcing, “Since so many of you asked for more time on the assignment that was due today, I’m extending its deadline to next week.”  

Syllabi should always include a clearly stated policy about the circumstances under which late work might be accepted, if at all.  

But should this policy be applied equally to low-stakes and high-stakes assignments? 

Low-Stakes Assessments  

If a course has many low-stakes assessments, like quizzes or homework problems, those assignments are usually due on the same day each week.  

For example, if class meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, there might a reading quiz due every Monday, to ensure that students are prepared for the week’s in-class discussions, and a homework problem due every Friday, to verify understanding of the week’s concepts. 

Here are three solid approaches to deadline flexibility for low-stakes assessments: 

1. Not flexible: Late work is never accepted  

If a student misses a deadline, they receive zero points on that assignment. 

This approach works best in courses that have many low-stakes assignments, such as reading quizzes on every textbook chapter, where missing one or two deadlines will not jeopardize a student’s understanding of the core concepts nor greatly impact their final letter grade. 

2. Somewhat flexible: Late work is accepted, at a penalty  

If a student misses a deadline, they can submit the assignment late, but their score will be penalized a specified amount (e.g. -5 points). 

This approach works best in courses where content acquisition is scaffolded such that missing one assignment will negatively impact a student’s understanding of core concepts and successful completion of future assignments. In this case, students who miss deadlines should be permitted to complete the missed assignments, but with a small scoring penalty to encourage on-time submissions in future weeks. 

3. Very flexible: Late work is made up, with instructor permission 

If a student misses a deadline, they must contact the instructor and arrange an alternate way to complete the assignment (e.g. by taking a make-up quiz during the instructor’s office hours). 

This approach works best in courses where low-stakes assessments are considered part of a student’s participation grade. In this case, missing a deadline is like missing a class meeting. Students should be encouraged to initiate contact with the instructor to arrange a way to verify their understanding of the missed assignment’s concepts.  

High-Stakes Assessments  

Every course has one or more high-stakes assessments, such as exams or research papers. These assessments are weighted more heavily (worth more of the overall course grade) than lower-stakes assessments because these are higher-level demonstrations of students’ proficiency in the course outcomes. Failure to successfully complete high-stakes assessments generally leads to failure of the entire course. 

What kind of flexibility is appropriate then for key, high-stakes course assessments? 

1. Not flexible: Deadlines do not change, under any circumstances  

If a student misses a deadline, they receive zero points on that assessment. 

This is the most common approach to deadlines for high-stakes assessments. It is rare for a college instructor to permit students to make up a missed midterm or final exam because students making up an exam would receive the unfair advantage of more time to prepare for the exam. Also, many final exams are scheduled for the very end of term, when there is no time remaining for make-up testing before instructors must report course grades to the college. 

2. Somewhat flexible: Deadlines are extended, at a penalty 

If a student misses a deadline, they can submit the assessment late, but their score will be penalized a specified amount (e.g. one letter grade per day). 

This approach is more common for midterm assessments, or for courses with single high-stakes assessments, such as a research paper that students work on throughout the term. If students who miss the deadline for a high-stakes assessment can still submit their work, but their score is heavily penalized, the course grades will accurately reflect the students’ term-long proficiency in the course outcomes. For example, a student who earned “A” scores all term but submitted their final paper one day late could still finish the course with a “B” grade. 

Remember, flexibility around assignments should be geared towards what makes sense in your course and for your students. While there are a lot of possible variations in regards to policy, the most critical element is to be clear and upfront with your students early in the term. This will help avoid confusion and complaints – and help you keep your sanity at the end of the term when students come looking for extra chances to make up missed work! 

Anna Johnson is an award-winning instructor at Mt Hood Community College in Oregon where she has worn many hats since 2005. Joining the faculty as an instruction librarian, Anna then spent 10 years as a career-technical instructor, preparing students for living-wage jobs as administrative assistants and front-end web developers, and now leads the college’s Business transfer degree program. Anna enjoys using problem-based learning and flipped classroom methodologies to prepare students for future workplace challenges. When she's not teaching, Anna is an avid cook, formidable fantasy football player, National Park enthusiast, and volunteer usher and tour guide for Portland's performing arts center. Anna has supported other instructors in their use of SIMnet as an MHE Digital Faculty Consultant since 2015.

College Info Geek

How to Finish a Huge Assignment or Project Overnight

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The great American writer Mark Twain once said,

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done the day after tomorrow just as well.”

When we live by that advice, though, we sometimes find ourselves chugging concentrated coffee at 2 a.m. in a valiant effort to stay awake and finish a huge project that’s due in 6 hours.

As productive as I’d like to think I am… I’ve been there.

If you’ve been there as well – or maybe if you’re there right now – this week’s video is for you. I’m not going to waste time lecturing you about the importance of planning, there are other videos for that – let’s just look at the best plan of attack when you find yourself in a time crunch.

Now, we’re going to look at some specific concepts related to planning and willpower in a minute – The Impact Effort Matrix, Ego Depletion – but let’s start with the foundation: location selection .

I think your location is vital when you’re working under pressure, and personally I like to pick my study locations based on their “vibe” – that is, what’s going on around me. I tend to favor coffee shops and libraries – I still go to my university library at times even though I’ve graduated – because I work well when I’m surrounded by other people who are also working. Also, close proximity to caffeine is helpful.

The most important part of location selection, though, is avoiding the “call of the pillow”. When you’re studying in a time crunch, it’s likely you’ll be doing it late into the night. That’s why you want to get as far away from your bed as possible.

The later it gets, the more you’ll start rationalizing how good a nap might be and the more you’ll start deciding that certain parts of your project don’t matter. So pick a place where going to bed would be more effort than finishing the next part of your project.

That piece of business taken care of, it’s now time to plan your efforts . Before you start working, take some time to break down your workload into individual parts. Then, it’s time to figure out which ones should get the bulk of your attention.

Dwight Eisenhower often remarked that,

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”

In the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , Steven Covey popularized the “Eisenhower Decision Matrix”, which is based on this principle. In the matrix, tasks are categorized based on their importance and urgency.

When you’re in a time crunch, though, everything can seem urgent – so importance is the factor you should focus on in this case. To that end, let’s use a similar but more fitting tool – the Impact/Effort matrix .

Here, tasks in a project are given scores based on their impact to the overall success of the project and the effort it will take to implement them. To illustrate how this works, here’s an example from my life.

When I was a senior in college, one of my final projects was building a web app. My idea was called AMPanic, and it was an app that would require you to log in and tell if you’re awake before a certain time – otherwise it would send an embarrassing email to someone. This was actually the precursor to the early wake-up system I use now, which I detailed in this video .

With this project, though, I found myself in a time crunch trying to finish it. So I broke my project down into different parts that I’d have to code and prioritized them using this Impact/Effort matrix.

The core functionality – the code that would let you set an alarm and an email message, the code that would schedule and send the email on time, and the function to cancel the email if the user checked in on time in the morning – those required a lot of effort to build, but they also had the highest impact on the project.

On the other hand, some parts of the site – like the About, FAQ, and Contact pages – didn’t have as high of an impact, but they were low-effort tasks. Since they didn’t take much time to create, I made sure to include them to make the site look more complete.

The main element of the site that I chose NOT to focus on was the user registration and login system. A proper one needs functions for resetting passwords, but I decided that the core alarm setting functionality would be more important to my grade since that was the point of the whole project. So I used a login system I had written for an old project and didn’t bother creating a way to reset passwords.

In the end, it was a worthwhile decision; the alarm system was more advanced than most of the other projects in the class, so I ended up getting an A.

To assign Impact/Effort scores to each component of your project – or each assignment if you’re juggling multiple – consider the following factors:

• What the core deliverables are
• The grading criteria for the project, what which components count for the most points
• What percentage of your grade each assignment counts for
• How much each component will contribute to the knowledge you need to have for tests, which usually impact your grade the most

Once you’e assigned scores to each component, I think it’s a good idea to tackle the ones with the highest impact and highest effort first. This is due to Ego Depletion – a phenomenon explained in Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow . Citing research from the psychologist Roy Baumeister, he reveals that:

“…an effort of will or self-control is tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert self-control when the next challenge comes around.”

Use the bulk of your willpower to complete the harder tasks first; that way, you’ll only have to deal with low-effort, high-impact tasks when you’re feeling drained.

That’s where we’re going to close for this week. If you select your location well, plan based on impact and effort, and tackle your tasks in a way that utilizes your willpower effectively, you’ll make if through your time crunch in one piece.

Need help finishing a personal project you’ve been procrastinating on? Read this next .

If you’re unable to see the video above, you can view it on YouTube .

Looking for More Study Tips?

You’ll find more tips on planning, study environments, and maintaining willpower in my free 100+ page book called 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less) .

The book covers topics like:

• Defeating procrastination
• Getting more out of your classes
• Taking great notes
• Reading your textbooks more efficiently

…and several more. It also has a lot of recommendations for tools and other resources that can make your studying easier.

If you’d like a free copy of the book, let me know where I should send it:

I’ll also keep you updated about new posts and videos that come out on this blog (they’ll be just as good as this one or better) 🙂

Video Notes

• Eisenhower Decision Matrix
• Impact/Effort Matrix
• Ego Depletion

What other topics related to working under tight deadlines would you like to see covered in the future?

Do you have any additional tips? Share them below 🙂

If you liked this video, subscribe on YouTube to stay updated and get notified when new ones are out!

Images: Eisenhower , Twain , Twain living room , James Cameron , ocean trench , Everest , wall of books , Big Ben , coffee shop

Why it’s hard for students to “just turn in” missing assignments, and how to get them unstuck

Mar 29, 2023 | Blog

With the end of the semester on the horizon, many students may feel overwhelmed by low grades or feeling behind in some of their classes.

As a parent, it can be stressful to see that your student has overdue work, or get notifications from their teacher that they’re missing assignments. 

It’s even more frustrating when you’ve told them over and over again how important it is to “just turn it in”…but the work is still showing up as missing.

The reality is that no matter how simple it might seem to an outside observer, doing missing work is almost never as easy as “just getting it done.” If they haven’t done the work yet, there’s a good chance that something is getting in their way. 

If you can figure out what the problem is before jumping in to help them (or make them) do the work, you’ll dramatically increase your chances of success.

In our experience, there are usually 3 main reasons students resist submitting their missing work…even when it seems like “just turning it in” would be SO much easier!

Reason 1: They think it won’t make a difference

Once the due date for an assignment has passed, students often de-prioritize it and move on to focus on upcoming assignments instead. It’s tempting for students to justify this by thinking “there are lots of other assignments, missing one or two won’t matter.”

But what they often don’t realize is that because of the way most grading scales are weighted, even one or two zeros can have an enormous impact on their grade. Showing students the difference it makes to turn in just a few assignments can increase their motivation to get the work done. 

Here’s an example of the difference it can make to turn in just a few missing assignments before the end of the semester:

Overall grade with 3 missing assignments: 78.3%

Overall grade when assignments are turned in: 90.1%

It’s hard for students to calculate these averages in their head, so it can be really powerful for them to run the numbers and see firsthand exactly how much they have to gain from making up their missing assignments.

When we do calculations like this with our students, they are almost always surprised by how much this makeup work could improve their grades, and feel much more motivated to submit the assignments when they can see for themselves the difference it will make.

Reason 2: They think it’s too late

Another reason students often resist doing makeup work is that they think it’s too late to get credit for it. 

Even if they’ve done the math and know that submitting the work would make a difference in their grade, they still won’t want to turn it in if they think the teacher won’t accept it.

Especially for introverted or anxious students, it can be very intimidating to have conversations with their teachers. They might think they’ll get in trouble for asking to submit their work late, or worry that the teacher will say “no.”

The good news is that many teachers are flexible with their late work policies and allow students to turn in overdue assignments even when it is past the “official” deadline to submit them.

So if students can find the courage to ask for help, there is a good chance that their teachers will respond positively and allow them an opportunity to make up the work.

For students who are struggling to reach out to teachers, we often find it is helpful to roleplay these conversations in coaching sessions if they’re not sure what to say, or work with them to email their teachers if they’re not sure what to say.

Reason 3: They feel overwhelmed

Students who are behind on their work often have challenges keeping track of due dates, managing time, breaking down complex assignments, prioritizing work, staying focused, or following through with plans….which is why they fell behind in the first place. 

These challenges can become even more daunting when they are behind in their classes, and trying to complete makeup assignments on top of their normal workload.

This can feel so stressful that a lot of students avoid or put off doing makeup work even when they   know   how much it would improve their grade.

For these students to get their work submitted, it’s essential to help them find ways to…

• Break down the assignments so they have a realistic plan for getting the work done that they’re confident they can actually follow through with
• Lower the stress they feel while they are doing the work so they will be less tempted to avoid it
• Visualize the progress they are making so they can see that their efforts are making a difference

Providing support

When students have a lot of makeup work to complete, having some additional support to help them work through it can be invaluable. 

For some students, this may mean finding a tutor to help them with the content they didn’t understand when their teacher was first presenting the material. 

For other students, having a family member or friend nearby as a source of moral support to keep them company while they are working (and a motivating reward to look forward to as soon as the work is completed) can be enormously helpful.

Other students may benefit from working with an academic coach to help them get unstuck and started on their missing work. Sometimes, having someone else who is not a family member step in to help can reduce stress and conflict at home and make it easier for students to take the steps they need to get back on track in their classes. If you think this type of support would be helpful for your student, please feel free to reach out and we’ll be happy to help! 

• Productivity Center

Never Miss an Assignment Again

Angela Ruth

• Business Tips

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2021

Everybody makes mistakes, but nobody wants to. Missing an assignment is a common mistake that we have all made at some point. While sometimes a solution can be as simple as pushing back the deadline, missing major assignments can cost you your job or a good grade in your classes.

Whether you’re struggling with school assignments, work projects, or balancing them both, this guide will help you never miss another assignment no matter what:

Write Down Everything

Start by writing absolutely everything you can about your project or assignment. Then, put every assignment due date into your Calendar with no exceptions. Even the smallest of deadlines are worth taking note of. You can use multiple calendars to spread out tasks by topic; just remember to have them all pulled into one Calendar — like the Calendar app, so you don’t miss a date.

Using an online Calendar means you can have access to your assignment list no matter where you are. Having direct access wherever you are will come in handy. Remember when you’ve had a paper due at midnight while you’re at a friend’s house and need to log on really quickly to upload your information? Your online Calendar will sync across all devices. You want to be able to check due dates on your smartphone as well as when you’re sitting at a computer.

If you like to physically write things down, go ahead! The action of writing things down can help improve memory , which is extremely important if you’re hoping to never miss an assignment again.

Give Yourself Plenty of Reminders

Even when everything is written down in your Calendar, there’s still a chance that you will forget an upcoming due date. However, a healthy dose of reminders ensures that not even the smallest detail gets overlooked over time. After all, a lot can happen between the day you write down as assignment due date and the day it actually arrives.

For example, you can set a reminder the day before an assignment is due for school to make sure that you have it completed. As you clock into work, a morning reminder will remind you of the tasks you need to complete by the end of your shift. These reminders force you to look at your Calendar after you fill it in initially.

Check Your Email to Start the Day

Last-minute changes happen, often due to circumstances out of your control. Even so, you should be aware of these changes so that you don’t get caught off guard. Checking your email at the beginning of each day should do the trick.

By starting your day off by scanning emails , you’ll be able to see the message your manager sent you at midnight notifying you that they expect your next assignment to be completed a day earlier. If you neglected to check your email in the middle of the night or at the start of your shift, you would be completely unaware of this change until it might be too late to do anything about it.

An email from your professor might contain a new assignment list for the following week. If you miss this email, you won’t be able to change up your Calendar in time to adjust your timetable and study schedule.

Communicate With Others

To avoid mishaps with upper management, make an effort to communicate often. Set clear expectations with your manager about how and when to communicate, so you’re not always getting the brunt of last-minute adjustments.

If your work gives you too many assignments, you’re more likely to miss a deadline or two due to the heavy workload. Your workload is another thing you can communicate with your superiors. If you don’t make it known that you’re feeling overwhelmed, nothing will change.

Communicating with coworkers and peers is also essential. We’ve all had a poor experience doing a group project where certain members of the group fail to pull their weight. Staying connected with them won’t be easy, but it will ensure that their feet-dragging won’t be the reason a project isn’t ready to submit on time. A reliable project member can also help you stay on top of deadlines as they arrive by sharing the responsibility.

Learn From Your Mistakes

Most of the time, when you miss an assignment, it’s because a mistake was made, even if only a small one. To stop missing assignments, learn from the mistakes you make to avoid repeating them. Over time, you’ll be a master of punctuality and completing deadlines.

Some mistakes we’ve already covered, in a sense. For example, failing to write down your due dates leaves a lot of room for error regarding late assignments. If this has happened to you, learn from your mistakes by vowing to write everything down from this point forward.

If you’re making an active effort to learn and improve, mistakes only need to happen once before you learn from them. For example, after putting a deadline on the wrong day in your Calendar once, you’ll be a lot more careful in the future.

Stop Procrastinating

Flexible due dates are the worst for chronic procrastinators. The due date will keep getting pushed back until its breaking point, and often ends up coming in late because of it. Staying on top of all your assignment means kicking procrastination to the curb .

If you have a problem with procrastinating, try to find a sense of urgency. Give yourself rewards for getting tasks done early. Use your Calendar to put together a work plan that ensures you’re chipping away at month-long projects. Do whatever it takes to avoid cramming in work at the last minute.

Don’t get too comfortable even when these tips start to show results. You need to stay on top of your game in order to meet all your deadlines with precision. You’ll be able to form better habits along the way but never let up, and you’ll never miss an assignment again.

Image Credit: ketut subiyanto; pexels; thank you!

• Entrepreneur
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My name is Angela Ruth. I aim to help you learn how Calendar can help you manage your time, boost your productivity, and spend your days working on things that matter, both personally and professionally. Here's to improving all your calendars and becoming the person you are destined to become!

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• Productivity |

Tired of missing deadlines? We can help.

Deadlines are important, but sometimes you just can’t deliver work on time. Missing deadlines never feels good, but understanding why it happens is the first step. In this article, we outline common causes of missed deadlines and how to avoid them—plus how to be proactive when you know you’re going to need an extension.

Missing deadlines is stressful, but the solution isn’t to get rid of them entirely. As a manager, the best thing you can do is help your team set due dates they can realistically meet without burning themselves out. Then if work gets overwhelming and missing deadlines is inevitable, you can help team members prioritize, divide, and conquer their most important tasks.

Missing deadlines: Why does it matter?

Deadlines exist for a reason. They help work flow smoothly by setting expectations around when tasks should be completed, so your team can accurately plan and organize work. They also motivate stakeholders to finish assignments, so your project can keep moving forward without getting stuck on a certain task. 

Missing too many deadlines is a leading cause of project failure . It can: 

Cause delays and put projects at risk.

Disrupt team and cross-functional workflows . 

Cause bottlenecks and block other teams from being able to complete their work. 

Erode trust over time, especially if stakeholders feel like they can’t rely on your team to finish tasks. 

Degrade team morale . 

When deadlines get toxic

Deadlines should help your team take control over their work. They shouldn’t make work feel overwhelming or out of control, which can happen when stakeholders set due dates without your team’s input. Ultimately, deadlines are most effective when you set them collaboratively—especially when cross-functional stakeholders assign deliverables to your team. Agreeing on deadlines helps you set realistic due dates that your team can actually meet, so you’re not constantly reacting and scrambling to finish requests.

When that’s not possible, or your team is staffed to support a specific business function, it helps when everyone is aligned on your team and company objectives. That way, stakeholders can prioritize truly important work that supports overarching business goals (instead of swamping your inbox with endless “high priority” tasks). 

Having too many unrealistic deadlines takes away your team’s agency and control over their workload—a driving cause of overwork and burnout . Team members who miss deadlines often feel like they’re constantly failing and disappointing others—even if they’re completing a reasonable amount of work. In the long run, this can drag down team morale. 

Why are you missing deadlines? 

Contrary to popular belief, missing deadlines isn’t always caused by bad work habits or productivity issues. There are lots of factors that can cause you and your team to miss deadlines, including:

Unclear priorities: Not understanding what’s most important and what you should work on first. 

Changes to project scope : Adding additional deliverables to a project or shifting requirements over the course of an assignment. 

Lack of planning: Not taking the time to work backwards from a deadline and plan what you need to accomplish by when. 

Improper estimation : Not understanding how long certain tasks will take. 

Competing priorities: Having too many high-priority tasks on your team’s plate at once.

Unrealistic deadlines: Last-minute requests, tight turnaround times, and similar situations in which your team can’t realistically complete work on time. 

Unforeseen roadblocks: Incidents that force you to pause work—like software bugs, team members leaving, or other unexpected snags. 

Uncommitted stakeholders: Having trouble getting others to complete tasks on time, especially if you can’t start work until they’re finished.

Lack of focus time : Having too many meetings and not enough time to actually get things done. 

How to prevent missed deadlines

Preventing missed deadlines is about more than brute-force productivity. Instead of just trying to work faster and get more done, it’s better to consider the underlying issues contributing to the problem. That way, you can deliver work on time without overworking and burning your team out in the process. 

Here’s what to do: 

1. Clarify priorities

Clear priorities help your team understand what work is most important, so they can tackle critical assignments first before moving on to other tasks. This is particularly helpful when there’s a lot on your team’s plate and you can’t get everything done right away. Instead of scrambling to finish everything, see if you can push out due dates for lower priority tasks—or delegate them to another team. 

Not sure where to start? Here’s how to clarify your priorities: 

Connect daily work to goals: When you understand how everyday tasks ladder up into team and business goals , it’s easier to see what’s important and what’s not. For example, it makes sense to prioritize an image optimization project if it contributes to a company goal to improve your website loading speed. To free up working hours, you can deprioritize a less important task to organize your internal team documentation. This doesn’t mean you won’t work on lower-priority tasks—it just means you can push out delivery dates to give your team extra time. 

Prioritize your to-do list: Prioritization works best when you do it every day. Try creating an Eisenhower matrix to organize tasks by urgency and importance. This prioritization technique helps you separate assignments into four buckets: Do, delegate, schedule, and delete. 

2. Have a system to keep track of projects and deadlines

Consistently meeting deadlines takes planning, and it’s hard to plan if you don’t know what work is coming up and how long it will take. To get the clarity you need, organize all of your projects and deadlines in one central location—so you can see at-a-glance what you’re working on, what’s coming up, and how long your team has to produce each deliverable . 

3. Make sure deadlines matter

Deadlines shouldn’t be arbitrary. Instead, team members should understand why you chose specific due dates so they have enough context (and motivation) to get things done on time. If your team knows that deadlines aren’t real, there’s less pressure to meet them—and over time, team members might start disregarding due dates entirely. 

Due dates always have a purpose, even if there isn’t a real deadline you need to meet. They can also help you achieve team goals and milestones —like writing a certain number of articles per month. Even if there’s no external pressure to publish each article on time, creating deadlines helps your team plan their own schedules and consistently move work forward. 

4. Set realistic due dates

If you want to consistently meet deadlines, you need to make sure you’re budgeting enough time to get things done. When setting due dates, it’s easy to fall victim to the “ planning fallacy ”—a psychological phenomenon in which people underestimate the time it will take to complete a task, even if they know that similar tasks took longer in the past. Instead of picking a realistic deadline based on our experience, we think “this time” things will be different and we can work faster. 

The first step to avoid the planning fallacy is awareness—if you know it exists, you can be more self-aware when it happens. In addition, it’s always better to budget a bit more time than you think you’ll need. 

5. Understand dependencies

Project dependencies are tasks that rely on the completion of another task. For example, app developers need to conduct user testing before finalizing a product design. One assignment needs to be done before the other can start—so if the first task is delayed, the second one also needs to be pushed back. 

When planning your project timeline , it’s important to understand dependencies so you can make sure tasks will be completed in the right order. That way, you can avoid bottlenecks and keep work moving consistently along. 

6. Remove distractions to improve focus

In today’s fast-paced work environment, distractions are the norm rather than the exception. Notifications from different apps like email and Slack rule the day—in fact, over half of workers feel like they have to respond to notifications immediately and over a third feel overwhelmed by persistent pings. 

You pay a mental cost every time you check notifications, and it can take upwards of 20 minutes to regain momentum after an interruption. That means if you check Slack three times over the course of an hour, you may not be able to get any significant work done. 

Try these techniques to help your team limit distractions and improve focus: 

Encourage your team to use do-not-disturb modes for communication apps like Slack and email.

Put your phone in a drawer or out of sight so you won’t be tempted to check messages or social media. Research shows that just seeing your phone nearby can drain focus. 

Schedule calendar blocks to encourage flow state and focused work, so people know you may be slow to respond. 

Consolidate apps and tools into a work management platform to reduce context switching . 

Conduct a meeting audit to eliminate unnecessary meetings and free up calendar space for focus time. 

7. Try a time management strategy

To meet deadlines, you need to be able to manage your time. If you or someone on your team struggles with procrastination, try one of these time management strategies to help stay on task: 

The Pomodoro Technique : Schedule 25-minute work sessions and 5-minute breaks.

Time blocking : Schedule out every single part of your day. 

Timeboxing : Create a “timebox,” during which you aim to finish a specific task within a certain time frame. 

Eat the frog : Tackle your most difficult task first before you do any other work. 

The Pareto Principle : Focus on tasks with the most impact to maximize the return on your time. 

The Getting Things Done (GTD) method : Write down everything you need to do in one place, so you can free up mental energy and prioritize your work. 

What to do when you miss a deadline

Missing deadlines happens to everyone from time to time. Instead of beating yourself up or placing blame, encourage team members to follow these steps. This helps you move forward, proactively deal with the situation, and minimize the impact for stakeholders. 

Say something as soon as you think you’ll miss the deadline. The more advance notice you can provide, the better. This gives stakeholders time to adjust their timeline to accommodate the delay. 

Explain what happened. It’s ok to provide an explanation when you miss a deadline, but try to keep it brief so you can stay focused on solutions rather than placing blame. 

Provide solutions. Think about what you can offer to make up for the inconvenience of missing a deadline. For example, you could turn in a rougher version of what you’ve completed so far or extend the deadline for a more polished deliverable. 

Evaluate your priorities and propose a new (realistic) deadline. Take stock of everything on your plate. When can you realistically expect to complete the assignment given everything else you’re working on? Setting a new deadline helps you (and stakeholders) plan how to move forward, as opposed to constantly worrying about an overdue task or just rushing to get it done as soon as possible. 

Update your project timeline and any dependencies. If your missed deadline is part of a larger project, adjust other tasks to make sure there’s still enough time to complete everything. For example, if someone is waiting on you to start a task, they may need extra time if you miss your deadline. 

Don’t beat yourself up. Everyone misses deadlines once in a while. The important thing is to learn from your experience and change your approach for next time. 

Use deadlines as a tool 

Deadlines aren’t your enemy, they’re an organizational tool. Setting clear and realistic deadlines can help you take control of your team’s work and keep projects running smoothly. That means instead of adding stress to your life, due dates can help provide structure and keep everyone on the same page. 

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• Student Life

How to Never Miss an Assignment Again

Never miss an assignment again.

That which you had been dreading has happened. You either completely forgot about an assignment that was due or wasn’t able to finish and turn it in on time. While missing an assignment is something most college students are bound to face in a certain point of their academic trajectory, it can be a very unpleasant experience which can result in several complications with your marks in a specific subject. The best thing would indeed be not having to go through it.

However, with so many things going on at the same time, so many tests to revise for and a ton of other assignments due as well, it may often seem like science-fiction to be able to have everything prepared on time. True, it may be difficult, but it’s not impossible. In this article, we will give you some useful tips to help you organize yourself better and, as we say in Spain, “not get caught by the bull”… again.

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Let’s state the most important thing first, and that is

Forgive yourself. Regardless of the circumstances why you weren’t able to hand in your assignment on time. Acknowledging you’ve made a mistake and that you need to correct it is the first step towards improvement. Come to terms with what has happened and then let go; after all, there’s no use in torturing yourself over what you could have done differently once you can’t do anything else about it.

[YouTube Channels: Top-10 Helpful Channels for College Students]

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Speak to your professor

If you weren’t able to complete your assignment because you or someone in your family have had a health-related problem, teachers are more likely to put themselves in your place and give you a chance to compensate for the mishap. Also, if you or one of your relatives have been ill, ask the doctor for a medical letter to show to your professor and prove that you’re not just making up an excuse.

[Emailing Professors: Do’s And Don’ts]

[10 Tricks To Help You Stay Motivated While Studying]

There’s (almost) nothing a good dialogue can’t solve

Even if you’ve missed your assignment deadline because you prioritized other things or simply because you procrastinated too much, talk to your lecturer if there’s anything else you could do in order not to fail the subject. Perhaps for this class, they’ll be taking the final exam’s marks more into account; or there are other assignments which would give you a good opportunity to make up for the incident. Keep in mind, however, that every professor is a world of their own. Just because Professor X told you that you could do a paper about tropical fish to compensate for the missed assignment doesn’t mean that Professor Y is willing to give you that chance. And furthermore, don’t try to have your way at all costs: if your professor says that there are no more opportunities, accept that no means no.

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[Study Tips For Finals: Why Do You Need To Start Now]

Don’t let it happen again!

Whenever one of your professors proposes a new paper to turn in or a new project to present, take good note of it in your calendar or agenda so that you make sure not to forget about it and end up having the deadline catching up with you. Once you have the date in which your assignment is due in mind, you can start preparing it with enough anticipation.

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Get to work!

Go to your college or local library and start gathering the materials necessary for completing your project/assignment: read books, look up information online, take notes, write up some drafts… Of course, you don’t need to work yourself to death in a matter of a few days, on the contrary: dedicate every day a little time to your task, even if it isn’t more than an hour. If you start gathering up information and writing a couple of paragraphs since the very first day, you’ll see how you’ll have it done in time!

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“I’m stuck?! Help, please!”

Is your assignment topic too complicated? You don’t even know where to start? Are you at a total loss? Don’t worry we all have been there. If you see yourself struggling with your assignment, you can always ask your professor your doubts or request for a tutorship. If you address them in a polite manner and they see you truly interested in your work, they won’t refuse. Another tip that always helps is regularly attending your lectures: more often than not, your professors may drop little hints about what they’re looking for in an assignment… or even in the final exam! You can also resort to asking around your circle of college friends for some solidarity between partners. Keep in mind that at least two heads think more than one!

[Conquer Time Management in College and Get Your Best Results]

[The Best Guide to Getting Straight A’s in Your Exams]

If you follow these tips, you’ll see how you won’t miss another assignment again during your college years. But even if missing an assignment is not a very nice experience, think that you’re also a human after all and that it is impossible not to make a single mistake every now and then. Furthermore, there is always a valuable lesson to be learned from our slip-ups.

Do you think there are any other pieces of advice that should be taken into account for not missing your assignments’ and projects’ deadlines? If so, feel welcome to share them with us in the comment section.

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How to efficiently manage your multiple deadlines

(Last updated: 13 May 2021)

Since 2006, Oxbridge Essays has been the UK’s leading paid essay-writing and dissertation service

We have helped 10,000s of undergraduate, Masters and PhD students to maximise their grades in essays, dissertations, model-exam answers, applications and other materials. If you would like a free chat about your project with one of our UK staff, then please just reach out on one of the methods below.

In a famous letter, Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the USA, identified two certainties in life: death and taxes. If you’re a university student, you can add deadlines to this list. During your university career, you’ve probably experienced the slightly panicky feeling that happens when deadlines start to accumulate, and then snowball as November hits. With assignments large and small, essay plans , in-class tests, presentations: it’s easy to find yourself overwhelmed by the number of deadlines you have to meet, and not knowing where to turn next. We’re not going to lie to you: the ability to manage multiple competing deadlines is a skill you’ll be learning your whole life. It is not something that can be mastered overnight. But you can set yourself on the right path by developing good habits from the very start! Read on for our tips on staying afloat in an ocean of deadlines…

Unless you’re blessed with an eidetic memory, you’ll need to find a means of scheduling your tasks clearly and logically. Ideally in a format that makes sense to you. A plan can be anything from a scrawled set of notes or a wall full of post-its to a state-of-the-art automated electronic calendar, but the main thing is to make your plan work for you. It should be something that you can reference easily and that you can trust the information on it.

Plan visually, and in 'analogue' In an era when smartphones and tablets have taken calendars electronic, and there’s seldom any real need to write things down, it’s easy to overlook the power and immediacy of a big, non-digital calendar containing a list of all your tasks. While apps that track your time, tasks and deadlines are a godsend – and if you consult them often enough and keep them up-to-date and set timely reminders, it’s possible they’re all you’ll need. They have one major drawback: they’re far too easy to ignore. Let’s say an alert goes off while you’re in class, or at a bar with your friends. You acknowledge it; maybe you snooze it, or perhaps you dismiss it altogether. The rest of the time you keep the app running in the background but it generally remains invisible until it sounds its next alert.

• By task type: mark long essays (say, 1000 words or more) in one colour, short written assignments in another colour, in-class tests for which you need to prepare or revise in a third colour, online exercises you have to submit on a certain date in a fourth colour, and so on. This is a useful type of scheme because it gives you a rough idea of the size of each task, as well as just telling you it’s due. If you assign red to long assignments that are going to take quite a while to write, and you’ve got three red deadlines within a span of a week starting a month or so from now, you know you need to get to work on at least one of these immediately!
• By module: colour-coding your tasks by module helps to distinguish between your to-do items and avoid seeing an intimidating, undifferentiated mass of tasks on your calendar. This type of scheme won’t do much more than help your tasks be easy on the eye and less overwhelming at the start of the term, but it will come into its own once you’ve got a sense of how your modules are going. If you know assignments for one of your modules are particularly difficult, or always take more time than you think they will, you can adjust your planning accordingly. But be mindful not to fall into the trap of identifying, say, blue tasks as ones that are especially unpleasant, and start putting them off…

Whatever colour scheme you use, remember to reserve a couple of colours for non-academic items. If you’ve got fixed social events coming up – an arena show with friends, or a pre-arranged overnight trip, make sure you add them to your calendar. You might appear to have a big empty space between your two big essay assignments, but if you’re out of town for a chunk of this time you need to know you can’t use that time!

Add tasks to your plan as you get them The key to effective deadline management isn’t just having all your tasks listed in one place. It is being able to fully trust and rely on your planning system. If you can’t glance at your calendar and know that it accurately reflects everything you’ve got to do and the dates by which you have to complete it, you’re going to end up in trouble sooner or later. And even if you use a fully automated planning system with lots of bells, whistles, and scheduled reminders, you need to give it reliable input so that it can do its work! The one area in which no planning tool, however robust, can help you is the simple act of entering your tasks in the first place. If your schedule doesn’t know what you’ve got to do, it can’t help you get it done!

So this is the one place in which you need to exercise absolutely impeccable discipline. The second you know about a deadline, add it to your wall calendar, your scheduling app, or both. That will often be at the very start of a module: read the outline, take a look at what assignments are required through the term, and add them. If smaller assignments are added later, make sure you’re diligent in noting it down and adding it to your calendar. Be proactive in looking for dates that likely won’t be finalised at the start of term, like exams or lab assessments. Add them to your calendar as soon as you know of their due date.

• Multitasking

At university, the chances are that you’ll be exposed to the challenges of multitasking either for the first time or to a far greater degree than previously . If you’re the kind of person who likes to diligently work through a to-do list one task at a time and check it off when you’re done, you may find it quite disconcerting to have multiple projects on the go at once. Here’s how you stay sane:

Understand and minimise context-switching “Context switching” is a term derived from computing , where it refers to the need to save the state of an application or process that’s part-way through and resume it later from that state. A computer processor has finite resources, so when a processor-intensive task comes along that’s more important than whatever task it was running before, the computer has to save its progress on the less important task to memory and finish it later. As you’ll have seen when your laptop starts to “chug” because you’ve had it turned on for days and have all your Office programs plus forty-odd browser windows open, context-switching comes at a cost. The process of storing the progress of a task in memory consumes time and resources, as does the process of subsequently restoring the task from the point at which the computer left off. The analogy is a good one to apply to your brain, and it’s increasingly used by theorists of productivity to explain where our lost time goes when we’re multitasking.

If you’re new to multitasking and managing multiple deadlines, as many undergraduates are, context-switching is likely to be one of the main ways in which you lose time even when you feel like you’re working flat-out. Let’s say you’ve got three assignments due on the same day. You’re anxious about each one and you feel the need to make progress on all three. While working on one you get momentarily distracted by an idea for one of your other assignments that you were struggling with earlier. So you immediately minimise the window containing your first assignment, open up the second assignment, and decide you’re going to add in the thought you just had. Only before you do so you’ve got to remind yourself of the structure of that assignment,. Try skim-reading it to find the place where you want to insert your new idea. Once you’ve added to your second assignment, return to your first assignment, and reread that as well to remind yourself of where you were.

If you’re in the midst of multiple assignments, the chances are your unconscious brain is processing a lot of content that’s distinct from what you’re working on consciously at any given moment. This can be a really useful thing provided you know how best to keep on top of the mix of ideas that it keeps throwing at your conscious brain. But if you allow yourself to follow every thought right through to its conclusion the second it occurs to you, you’re going to work very inefficiently, even if all your interruptions are work-related. With disruptions caused by phone calls, text messages, emails, and social media notifications, it’s more than possible that you’ll never work on a single task for more than a few minute. Next thing you know you’re interrupted and have to use valuable “processing power” to remind yourself where you left off. Indeed, so taxing are the demands on us to repeatedly context-switch that, according to this fascinating blog post from the makers of productivity app Trello, we temporarily lose IQ points during bouts of heavy context-switching.

So how do you combat the context-switching impulse?

• Go into “offline mode” while working. Turn off your phone, disable email notifications, and do your best to minimise distractions for, say, 25 minute chunks of work (see the section on procrastination, below, for why this is a good number), and reward yourself with five minutes of online time after you’ve completed a work block.
• Keep a notepad beside you as you work and use it to jot down any ideas that come to you about tasks you’re not supposed to be working on at the moment. These notes will help jog your memory and ensure that valuable unconscious brain activity doesn’t go to waste, while minimising the “processor cost” of keeping your place in what you’re doing right now.
• Tackle any small, easy-to-complete tasks or stresses before you start work on a larger task. If your brain is nagged by small administrative things you need to get done, calls you need to make, or emails you need to send, these things are likely to distract you repeatedly and pull you away from your main task. Even if you have to spend a whole morning, afternoon, or evening dealing with small potential distractors before getting to that big chunk of work, you’ll be rewarded with a more productive and efficient environment when you do get to work. An important caveat, though: don’t go looking for small tasks that you can busy yourself with just so you can avoid having to tackle bigger, more challenging chunks of work!

Learn to identify saturation Although unscheduled context-switching is taxing on your finite mental resources and will slow you down considerably, it’s important to recognise that you don’t always have to see one task through to completion before embarking on another. You might be familiar with the 80/20 rule , which suggests the first 20% of time we spend on a given task is where we get 80% of our useful work done (with the corollary that we spend the remaining 80% of our time doing the last 20% of the work!). This happens because, after spending a certain amount of time on a given task, we become saturated, and cease to be able to apply ourselves efficiently to this particular process. Saturation feels a lot like boredom, and indeed feeling bored or frustrated with a task you’ve been working on for a while can be a symptom of saturation. (It’s also perfectly possible that the task is just tedious.

If you’ve become saturated with a particular task, set it aside and focus on something else. Whether that’s a well-deserved break or tackling another task you need to start. If the new task is sufficiently dissimilar to the previous one, you should find that your mental saturation doesn’t carry over, and the new task enables you to “freshen up” mentally. Recognising and managing saturation (and distinguishing being legitimately unable to spend any more time on a task from simply not feeling like doing it) is one of the most important skills you can develop as you learn to multitask effectively. Saturation is also one of the main reasons to start work on your assignments well before they’re due. If you start work on an assignment that’s due tomorrow and reach saturation point, tough luck! You’re going to have to drag your sluggish brain to the finish line no matter how inefficiently it’s working.

Proactively plan task switching and downtime Part of the art of mastering multitasking lies in being realistic about what you can and can’t do with your time. Although unplanned context-switching will hit your productivity hard, you should plan to switch regularly between tasks. Do not allow any one to consume you at the expense of the others. Plan to spend four unbroken hours on the same assignment and the chances are you’ll reach saturation point long before you reach the end of your allotted time.

Similarly, plan on working seven days straight without a day off anywhere in between and you’ll end up disappointing yourself, feeling inadequate, and possibly giving up on your plan entirely. Recognise that your brain will work best if you devote at most an hour or two to any given assignment (unless it’s due tomorrow, of course!) and stay fresh by moving over to another and coming back to the first assignment after a break, or the next day.

And if you decide not to work, make it a proactive decision. If you have a vague plan to work and don’t manage to get anything done, you’ll feel guilty and your time not working won’t have been put to good use. Make a positive decision to relax and let your hair down, and you’ll feel your downtime is an earned reward and go back to your work all the fresher for it.

Procrastination

You probably have a pretty good idea of what procrastination looks like, and that’s probably something like starting up your laptop to work on an assignment and then spending the morning surfing the web, looking at your social media feeds and posting on your Instagram account. But the key to minimising procrastinating behaviour is understanding that it takes many different forms, and that not all procrastination looks the same. Sebastian Bailey, the co-founder of the corporate productivity consultancy firm MindGym, identifies five different types of procrastination , among them complacency “that’s easy; I can always do it later”, avoiding discomfort, fear of failure, emotional state (“I’m just too stressed right now”), and action illusion.

This last form of procrastination is particularly worthy of note if you’re new to balancing multiple deadlines,. This is because it can lead us down a dangerous path even when we’re working diligently towards our goals – or at least we think we are. Action illusion procrastinators tell themselves work must be getting done because they’re working hard… on something. If you’ve got assignments due in four different modules it’s easy to tell yourself you’re working flat-out because you’ve done all the extra reading for one class, or because you keep polishing up an assignment you’ve really enjoyed working on, while other assignments sit there unstarted. Or you might spend all your time obsessively working and reworking your task plan without ever starting on the tasks themselves!

Forcing yourself to focus on the unpleasant stuff Once you’ve identified where you’re procrastinating – whether it’s by avoiding work altogether or just focusing on the pleasantest tasks on your list – there are various ways you can discipline yourself, and force yourself to focus on tasks you really don’t want to face.

• Timed methods: There are numerous methods of tackling procrastination that advocate you allot a certain amount of time to an unpleasant task, and reward yourself with a break, or an opportunity to do something else.
• The popular Pomodoro method , originated in software development. It advocates working in blocks of 25 minutes followed by a 5-minute break, with a longer break after every fourth working block.
• MindGym advocates a “strive for five” rule for exceptionally unpleasant tasks or those causing a substantial mental block. Spend just five minutes trying to get to grips with your task, then re-evaluate. After five minutes, decide if you’re going to continue. If the task still overwhelms you, come back later and spend another five minutes on it. If it now seems more manageable, spend another five minutes and re-evaluate again. The idea is that you’ll gradually pick up the momentum you need to spend longer on the task and get it done. Even if that takes a while you’ll chip away at it in five-minute increments.
• Rewards and incentives: Set yourself an achievable goal for a study period and reward yourself. Treat yourself to your favourite TV show, social media session, some gaming time, or a drink with friends – after you’ve completed it. This method works well if you can break down a task into clearly manageable chunks and have a good understanding of what constitutes progress.
• Visualisation: Visualise yourself in 24 hours’ time. How does that you feel having completed the task? Elated? Relieved? Unburdened? How does that same you feel having failed to complete the task? Frustrated? Anxious? Self-loathing? Doing the best for future-you can be a powerful way of working through your mental blocks and accomplishing unpleasant tasks!

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, how do most students manage their time in college.

I've been hearing a lot about how challenging time management in college is. What are some common strategies that students use to manage their time effectively? Any tips to prepare ahead of time would be helpful!

Many students find the transition from a structured high school environment to the self-directed nature of college challenging. However, with some planning and organization, you can easily manage your time well and minimize stress.

One popular method students use is maintaining a planner or digital calendar to keep track of all their responsibilities. This includes important dates such as assignments due, exam dates, club meetings, and sports practices. Visualizing time in this way can also help you distinguish free periods for studying, socializing, or relaxation.

Study time is also key to consider. Most college students subscribe to the rule of thumb that you should study 2-3 hours outside of class for every hour of class. Hence, if you have a 3-credit course, you'd typically expect to spend 6-9 hours studying for that course alone each week.

Prioritization is another commonly used technique. Establishing what tasks or classes require more immediate attention or effort can help focus your energy efficiently. This can involve ranking tasks based on importance and urgency. For example, studying for an exam taking place tomorrow might rank higher than a project due in three weeks.

To prepare in advance, you could start by developing positive habits such as following a consistent sleep schedule, setting aside certain times for self-care or relaxation, and refraining from last-minute cramming. Many students get into the routine of reviewing class materials or readings shortly after their class, which helps consolidate what they've learned.

Finally, over-commitment can be a problem among college students eager to participate in extracurricular activities. Balancing academics and extracurriculars is crucial – remember, it's better to fully dedicate yourself to a few activities than to spread yourself thin across many.

Overall, time management in college is largely about finding what strategies work best for you and your schedule. Everyone's methods may vary slightly, so explore different techniques and find a system that best suits your needs.

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CollegeVine’s Q&A seeks to offer informed perspectives on commonly asked admissions questions. Every answer is refined and validated by our team of admissions experts to ensure it resonates with trusted knowledge in the field.

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How To Organize Assignments So You Never Miss A Due Date Again

If you aren’t a pro at organizing your assignments for school, I guarantee you will be after this! One of the first things a student should do before school starts is to make sure that they have a reliable way to organize their assignments. This is why I’m going to teach you how to organize assignments so you never miss a due date again!

Putting all of your assignments for the semester in at least ONE place will actively remind you of your due dates so you don’t ever forget them. I will go through some of the most popular methods to organize your assignments as well as let you know which method I prefer the best.

How To Organize Your Assignments As A Student

The three major ways you can organize your assignments include using a school planner app, using a physical planner, and using Google Calendar. All of these methods have their benefits and drawbacks, but they all have been proven to work and I know you will find the perfect method for you.

myHomework App

One of my favorite apps for college students is myHomework ! It is the ultimate app for organizing your assignments. You all do not understand how life-changing this one app was when I discovered it during my freshman year! Because of myHomework, I never missed an assignment due date. The best part is that it’s extremely easy to use! Check out the tutorial video below.

how to organize with myhomework:

• Download the app from your app store
• Create a free account
• Color code each class
• Put in what times you will take that class
• What type of assignment it is
• Priority level (how important/urgent it is to get it done)
• Reminders (so you don’t forget to actually do it)
• Attach any additional files (instructions, deadline timeline, etc.)
• And completing an assignment is as easy as swiping to the left and poof💨 it’s gone!

This is by far my favorite method because after you set everything, you’re done! Unlike a physical planner where you have to constantly refer to what you wrote, with this app, you can get automated notifications and reminders for each assignment. Spend a day before the semester begins to take a couple of hours to import all of your assignments. Seriously focus on customizing exactly how you want (reminders, priority level, etc). Once you’re done, you will have a complete look at every single assignment you will need to complete and any additional information right at your fingertips. It’s simple, straightforward, and reliable.

Why it works:

• Built-in structure for organizing classes and assignments
• See monthly, weekly, and daily views of assignments that you need to complete
• Your data can sync across multiple platforms
• Supports time-block and period-based schedules
• It’s 100% free

Related Article ⇾ The Best Essential iPhone Apps For Students

Planner Method

Another way to make sure you keep track of your assignments is to have a physical planner. This is the old-school way that still gets the job done. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there are new planners with different and cool features popping up constantly. There’s a reason why… Planners work when you make them work! The steps for this method are very similar to the steps you would use with the myHomework app.

• Go through each syllabus and write the classes you will be taking (in the notes section of your planner)
• I would also highlight them in a particular color and write the days and times that you will take these classes
• Write down every single assignment that you will have to turn in throughout the semester on its due date
• Add in every quiz and test day as well as the day you will have to take them

Now the next thing you need to do is create reminders. As far as reminding you when things are due, there are many options:

• You can write reminders in your planner. If you have all of your due dates in your monthly view (as I instructed and recommended above), you can then use the daily or weekly view to insert reminders weekly of assignments/quizzes/projects/tests coming up.
• If you have all of your due dates in your planner, you can couple this method with using your phone for reminders. Using apps such as Google Calendar or the regular Calendar app can help you get instant reminders to work on assignments and study for tests.

I will have a post all about the best college planners soon! I have tried countless planners. So, I can’t wait to share what has worked a lot for me and how it can help you as well. So stay tuned by signing up for my email list to know when that post will be live!

• You’re more likely to remember things when you write them down
• Complete freedom in organizing and being creative with your planning
• You don’t have to worry about not having wifi

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a God-send. I prefer this method right now in my daily life because it helps me stay organized and informed of my schedule at ALL times!! I have a complete tutorial on how I set up and organize my Google Calendar so I will have that linked below. But I want to give some great tips in this article as well for organizing your classes and assignments!

Related Article ⇾ How To Time-Block Your Life For Success

Google Calendar has an incredible feature that allows you to create different calendars. For example, I have a calendar that’s strictly for work-related things, I have one for getting random things done, which is appropriately named “Getting Sh*t Done”, and even a calendar strictly for family things. I can also subscribe family members to the “family” one so we all know what is going on.

Color coding helps keep everything more organized as well. Different colors mean different calendars. Choosing brighter colors can be for the more important calendars such as work and appointments and dimmer colors can be for more routine things.

How to apply this method to your classes:

• This allows you to color-code your classes to differentiate every class and their assignments
• This blends every class together, but you will be able to determine what’s school-related and what is not related to school in your schedule
• This helps you see a clear difference between when you have classes when things are due, and when you will work on the things that are due (study time)
• Complete organization of classes and assignments

Final Things To Consider

Choose what works for you. I like to give different options because I know everyone is different. What works for me might not work for you. So try one way of organizing your assignments. If it doesn’t work out, no biggie, just move on to a new method. The goal is to keep trying until you find that magic formula that helps you stay on top of your school life.

Don’t wait to import your assignments. This is a major pro tip. There was a time one of my professors added a random assignment that we had to complete that semester and I forgot to put it in the myHomework app, so I missed it 🥴 lol… This is why I encourage you to always put things in your planner when your teacher announces any extra assignments or extra credit opportunities that may not have been on the syllabus – right when it’s announced . Otherwise, you will most likely forget. Also, check out my post about how you can get every assignment, even new/random ones automatically imported into your Google Calendar if your school uses Canvas.

Related Article ⇾ How To Sync Your Canvas Calendar To Your Google Calendar

Lastly, make sure you insert reminders for every assignment. In the case that you do forget about a due date, you have enough time to complete it because you placed a reminder for that assignment. Whether you’re super busy or not, we constantly forget things throughout the day and it’s important to have that sort of virtual “personal assistant” to remind us of things. So use your phone to your advantage and make sure you keep track of your due dates.

Many classes, especially in college, won’t allow you to turn in anything late. Which makes organizing your assignments and due dates that much more important!

If you have any other ways that you organize your assignments and due dates, please leave them in the comments below. I’d love to hear how you organize your class dates. I hope you’ve found some awesome ways how to organize assignments in a way that works for you!

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This is great advice! I’m looking into these tools, I think they will help a lot. Thank you 🙂

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What to do if you fail an assignment

rhiannonparry

Failing an assignment is always an awful feeling. Whether you just didn’t understand the work, or for some reason completely misunderstood the task, it’s never easy seeing that low mark on your screen. If you’re wondering what to do and where to go for help, here’s some advice on what to do if you fail an assignment!

What counts as a fail?

A failed assignment usually means that it scores under 40%. This also goes for the overall module mark as well. If you score less than 40% in the overall module, then you will fail that module too. It’s important to check the weighting of the assignment, because even if it is a fail, you may still have a chance to pass the module overall.

It’s not the end of the world

Don’t panic! Failing an assignment doesn’t mean you’re going to fail university and have to drop out! First of all, it’s worth checking what percentage of the module the assignment. If you fail one assignment, but do well in the others, you can still pass the module without having to worry! This obviously means you probably won’t get a first, but passing is always the most important bit. You can find out more about how the overall UK uni grading system works here.

If you fail the module

If your assignment was a huge chunk of the module, then you will most probably fail the module. When this happens, it’s important to get in touch with your lecturer to see what the next steps are. You may be able to resit an exam if that contributed to the failure of the module, or you may be able to pass anyway. However, you do need a certain amount of credits (usually 120) to pass the year, and if you don’t achieve this, then you will have to resit the whole year.

Why you failed the assignment

If you failed the assignment due to sickness or ongoing issues, then you should definitely tell your lecturer to see if something can be done. Obviously, you should apply for extenuating circumstances before you submit your assignment, but if you haven’t, then email your lecturer to see if anything can be changed. If you failed because of plagiarism, check your sources and referencing to ensure that you did it right. If you can’t find any mistakes, tell your lecturer who can help you sort out an appeal.

You can still save your grade

If it’s only your first assignment, then don’t worry too much. You can still do really well in other assignments in the module, giving you a pass overall! If you don’t understand the work you’re doing or just need help writing essays in general, your university should have someone who can offer support to you. This can include services within the university who offer meetings on essay writing. Discussing your feedback with your lecturer will make sure you don’t repeat the same mistakes in your next assignment.

You can appeal

If you disagree with a grade you’ve been given, then appeal! Essay writing can be subjective, so if you think you were scored lower than you deserved, email your lecturer about getting your work re-marked. If you disagree with the feedback you’ve been given, it’s always worth asking your lecturer about it, as they may have made a mistake whilst marking your work. If you do email your lecturer, it’s always best to be nice about it, since everyone can make mistakes.

Talk to your lecturer!

Your lecturer or academic tutor will be able to offer you the best advice. Depending on your university, you might be able to resit. They can also direct you towards who to talk to if you would like your work to be re-marked. If you do end up failing the module or the year, they can offer the best advice on what to do next. You’re not the first person to have failed an assignment,  so they will definitely know what to do to help.

Failing an assignment is never the end of the world, and whatever happens everything will be alright. If you do think you’re going to fail the year, then read our article on what happens if you fail your first year of university .

Last Updated on September 6, 2024

Published on June 2, 2023

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Knowing that most students submit assignments right around the deadline, is it advisable not to set deadline that is very late at night?

Like many on this site, I use a Moodle-type online Content Management System to give assignments to my students, and receive the finished work for grading. This is in a traditional context where the students are physically present in the classroom, and the online part is seen as a simple tool to be used in addition to the classic paper-based route. Students' first class for the day usually begins at 8 a.m.

For the last few years, I put the deadline for assignment acceptance at midnight, with plenty of time (2-3 weeks) to do the work, so each student can handle his/her workload as they wish. These are young adults aged 18-25, and are in theory very much responsible for their acts. Observation gives us actual hand-in times with approximately the following distribution:

• 1-2 days before deadline: 5%
• 3-24 hours before: 10%
• 1-2 hours: 10%
• less than 1 hour: 65%
• emails in distress after the deadline has expired saying they have encountered a computer glitch or some other excuse: 10%

Which I guess is about par for the course. :-(

So it is clear that while in theory these students are responsible young adults, in practice they tend to plan ahead in a less than stellar way. The impression that is perceived is that the online nature of the submission system makes students take slightly more liberties with deadlines than when assignments had to be handed in, in a face-to-face situation - although it is clear that even then there will always be a certain percentage of people with difficulties respecting deadlines.

OK, here is the question: without getting into considerations on whether students should plan better (and possible ways in which I and other teachers could help them do so), would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep (moral considerations welcome) and actually attending class at the beginning of the next day? Do I get to patent this Great Idea?

No, that last bit was a joke. ;-)

Reactions from people who are not actually teachers, but have experienced this context as a student are also welcome.

I have ended up accepting the answer by Superbest below, basically because I liked his discussion of alternative possibilities. This is a bit subjective, since many other answers are also of very high quality IMHO - and I would certainly encourage the reader to peruse all the answers given here, and the varying points of view expressed (also in comments). Much appreciated.

• online-learning

• 28 I had to take a take-home exam when I was 25. There was no Internet (this was almost 40 years ago). I had to run 3 miles (about 5 km) trying to meet the 8 a.m. deadline. Yes, I was a responsible adult (I swear). No matter what your schedule is, your observed distribution would look about the same. So, I would suggest move the deadline to 8 p.m. so the students would have plenty of time to get on social media or play games after they submit their assignments.;-) –  Nobody Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 8:27
• 19 Considering the concept of deadlines itself, I really like the idea described elsewhere on this site (or on Math Educators) a while ago to slowly worsen the grade of late submissions until they automatically fail. So you can still get a decent grade for submitting 10 minutes late but not for submitting 48 hours late (depending on the total length of the assignment, of course). Also, I think that computer glitches are today’s “the dog ate my homework” and should not be a valid excuse. –  Wrzlprmft ♦ Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 12:41
• 71 One trivial advantage of 10pm over midnight - no danger of someone getting confused over which day is meant! –  Andrew is gone Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:05
• 50 As a student, I am usually part of that 65% who turn their hw in last minute, but it's not because it took that long, it's just that I am usually paranoid about handing in something earlier than I have to and then realizing that I made a mistake or could have done better. So, I tend to turn assignments in last minute, although I finished them much earlier. –  dramzy Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 17:19
• 22 As a somewhat recent student, one reason why I often submitted close to the midnight deadline was that evenings and late nights were often when I had the time to work. If a deadline were set to be earlier in the day when I had classes and activities to attend, then I would be much more likely to submit the night before with plenty of time to spare. Then again, that might mean I would just stay up until 3 instead of 12 :) –  David K Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:46

18 Answers 18

While I admire your concern for the students, I feel that ultimately your endeavor is quixotic.

To be sure, I see nothing wrong with making your deadline be at 10 pm. It won't change anything, so you might as well. But I wouldn't expect it to have any notable effect, and I would be wary of the slippery slope that leads to you blaming yourself for the students' errors.

The reason I am so pessimistic is that I don't think procrastination and irregular sleep are caused by deadline timing (unless the work demanded is truly overwhelming, but in college it never is ). They are caused by poor personal discipline and bad habits acquired over many years leading up to the present. Regardless of what you do, the procrastinators will still invent ways to procrastinate, because the problem is rooted in their own behavior, not yours. You therefore cannot solve the problem by changing your behavior.

For instance, if you have the deadline at 10 pm, the procrastinator will drop everything that evening to work on your assignment and submit it around 10. Then he will still stay up doing the things he just postponed for the sake of your assignment. Because, recall, this person is not selectively procrastinating on your course only - they have also other courses that have deadlines. Even if all courses had the same early deadline policy, the students would still have their own errands with self-imposed deadlines at later times that they stay up for.

By the same logic that makes you consider 10 pm, we can explore other alternatives:

• 5 pm is a fair time, since it would presumably encourage students to concentrate their last ditch effort in the typical working day. However, there will also be students who have classes right up to the deadline that day, and if they procrastinate (as some certainly shall) they will now skip class to do the assignment, which is arguably worse than staying up!
• Noon is another time that sounds like a good idea. Being too early, you might expect that it will make students feel they have no choice but to start working on it early since the morning isn't nearly enough time, and if they can't finish it the night before they can safely go to bed, get some sleep, and finish in the morning. But realistically, the procrastinators who stay up late and hand it in at midnight now will just start working at 1 am and stay up all night to finish it.
• 9 am can be argued for as a realistic time - it's not like you will start grading at midnight, so there isn't really a point in requiring the assignment by midnight - instead of having the students rush their submission to a deadline just so it could sit in your mailbox for several hours, you could tell them to that you will start grading at 9 am and they should have it done by then. This makes the deadline less arbitrary, since there is now a clear logic to being required to meet it (ie. you will be delayed if they don't do their part). But of course you will again have the same problem of students staying up all night because they procrastinated.

For what it's worth, I think the midnight deadline came about as codification of an unspoken tradition. Often deadlines are given as days, without time - with this, there is always much controversy about what exactly counts as meeting an August 6 deadline: Does it have to be done at the beginning of Aug 6? Does it have to be before the instructor leaves the office? Does it have to be before the end of the day, ie. before you go to sleep? Well, what if you never go to sleep, can you squeeze out a few more hours and still "meet your Aug 6 deadline" by submitting at 3:14 am on [technically] Aug 7?

Even though informally "today" means "until I go to sleep", the convention is that the date changes at midnight, which is also reinforced by how computer clocks show the date. Hence, I think the midnight deadline came about as an extension of this - it's just a date delimiter.

As for the students, since you are concerned about how late they go to sleep, surely you will agree that planning ahead and not leaving everything to the last minute is an important skill to be learned as part of tertiary education. This, then, the students must learn on their own, you cannot help them by tinkering with deadlines, since indeed the deadline is not what is preventing their learning. In fact, one could argue that you should maximize the negative reinforcement, and set the deadline at the worst possible time - say 6 am: The more misery you inflict on the procrastinators, the better they will appreciate how important it is to learn discipline, and the sooner they will take steps to unlearn their bad habits.

Granted, I'm not seriously suggesting you do the above, since it seems like it could go horribly wrong. Realistically, I could instead suggest the following:

• Set your deadline at some reasonable, early time such as noon.
• Secretly (ie. do not tell this part to the students) have the "real deadline" (for instance, the one you lose points for missing) be quite a bit later, say 5 pm.
• In class, say that it is very important they not miss the deadline even by a minute (don't say why), and they should come talk to you if they feel they won't make it.
• When they inevitably come asking for more time, be liberal with the extensions, but not before making them explain why they were late and lecturing them on the importance of planning ahead. When giving the extension, explain that they absolutely cannot miss the extended deadline, because then you would not be able to meet your own deadline for grading (whether true or not).
• If anyone misses the noon deadline (but not the 5 pm deadline), confront them about it to discourage submitting late without asking for an extension (which allows bypassing the social discomfort of asking for more time).

With this, you might create something like a low stakes environment (you don't lose massive points just for being a few minutes late) while still creating a fair amount of social pressure to increase the likelihood of a lightbulb appearing and the student thinking, "Hey, Dr. Ward is very nice and reasonable about deadlines and everything, but maybe it's worth for me to try to stop leaving everything to the last minute?". Furthermore, if you force them into an explicit discussion about their procrastination, they have an opportunity to ask you for advice on how to plan their work.

But all of this requires quite a bit of effort from you (much more than just replacing "midnight" with "10 pm" on your syllabus). So if you are not willing to commit the energy, there isn't really much that can be achieved with quick fixes.

• 3 Basically, you are recommending a holistic approach to the way I use the online platform, am I not correct? ;-) Fair enough. Since I cannot handle the complete discussion in one step, I will be concentrating separately on each aspect. But you are very right to comment on the fact it is a complete process with many aspects to it. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 20:02
• 44 "...unless the work demanded is truly overwhelming, but in college it never is..." I feel the need to say that this is largely a matter of opinion. What is a piece of cake to one person could very well overwhelm another person. Just because you never got/get overwhelmed by college doesn't mean that nobody does. However, I realize this does not invalidate your answer, nor does it even invalidate the first part of the sentence saying that lack of sleep is probably not tied to the timing of deadlines. –  PrinceTyke Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 12:20
• 6 Imagine a single parent with a full-time job who is also going to school full-time. It is certainly possible that they could get overwhelmed at some point. I like your answer other than that part. –  Benjamin Hubbard Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 14:39
• 5 +1 to @PrinceTyke, -1 to this answer. Overwhelming is a relative term. Also, you're way too pessimistic about people's reasons for their habits and generally the whole thing. –  user541686 Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 21:00
• 3 "and not leaving everything to the last minute is an important skill to be learned as part of tertiary education" -- I learned this is an incredibly effective way of getting s*** done in college. One semester Sundays 8pm - 4am was one problem set, Thursdays 6pm - 6am was another, A's in both courses. Now I go to work and generally do work doing the day so not at night, so it's moot. And as far not procrastinating on things like going to the DMV, getting bloodwork done, paying rent on time, etc., those have nothing to do with things I learned in college. –  user18072 Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 22:19

First of all, I think the distribution that you're seeing is not very unusual, and indeed looks very similar to the distribution of times that I see coming from mature scientists submitting conference papers and grants.

It is simply that people, including your students, tend to overcommit themselves and to underestimate the difficulty of work. When that is combined with tasks on which there is a flexible amount of effort that can be invested (e.g., quality of work on an assignment), it is generally the case that "this work is done" is an ill-defined notion, and instead it gets triaged at some point of time shortly before the assignment. Better and more prepared students (or whoever) simply climb farther up in quality before triaging.

Given that, I generally advocate for a policy of "tight deadlines, lots of mercy." That means setting the deadline slightly before when you really want the assignment turned in, and then being very liberal about accepting requests for extension up until your secret "real deadline."

Addressing your specific question about timing, I think that if you want your students to get more sleep, moving the deadline up a couple of hours is a totally reasonable tactic: given the phenomena at work, it is unlikely to affect the distribution or quality of the assignments you receive. Depending on how your automated system works, you may also be able to explicitly support an official deadline of 10pm, with the de facto ability to leave the submission system open longer to receive the main tranche of "just a little bit late" assignments.

• 3 Yes, this strategy is indeed possible with our (Moodle-based) system. The only point that hinders me in applying it is the fact that students will rapidly become aware of the rules actually being applied. It is worth some thought, though - and the analysis is well appreciated. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 12:12
• 81 I think this is unfair to students who take deadlines seriously. If they had problems with a homework, they would turn in what they had shortly before the stated deadline. They lose the points they could have gained if they had known the real deadline, and taken a few more hours. –  Patricia Shanahan Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 13:29
• 28 A good policy they had at my university was staggered penalties. IIRC you'd lose 1 point out of 22 for missing the deadline, no excuses, then another point for each additional 24 hours. So those who overcommit learn a valuable life lesson without their work being completely wasted, and those who plan ahead are rewarded. And if, like me, you discover a catestrophic error 24 hours before deadline, you make a tradeoff between submitting fixed work a day late at -1 point and incorrect work on time at -?? points –  user56reinstatemonica8 Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:17
• 21 Set the official deadline to 22:00 and let the system accept submissions until 22:30 - this will not really be unfair to diligent students, because 30min will not likely decide between life&dead - but many students will be happy akin wow... already 21:59 and the internet is slow as hell.... 22:03 uploading - yeah I got lucky it sill worked! –  Falco Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:48
• 15 @O.R.Mapper you can easily add this as a benefit rather than penalty - if your submission is more than 3 days before the deadline you get 3 extra points for free. Because with an overall assignemtn time of 3 weeks, most students start to work on the problem 1-2 days before deadline... so either you start early to get the bonus, or you are already one of the late ones and don't complain if someone was 20minutes slower... –  Falco Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:51

I would consider a deadline at around 10p.m. very wise and student-friendly. I remember staying up late night as long as the submission system allows to post a new version and polishing the hell out of my assignment, although it probably made little difference.

As a lecturer I have always readily given small extensions to people who asked at least a little (about a day) in advance before the deadline, because I think that this fosters good habits in life: it is OK to fail sometimes, but you should handle the failure responsibly and warn people depending on you in advance.

I like the "tight deadlines, lots of mercy" policy mentioned in another answer (which I think is one of the good solutions). If you are worried that students will learn and exploit this policy, you can have a deadline that is openly less strict: for example subtracting 10 points from the evaluation of the assignment for every hour of delay or letting the students to submit until the next lecture, but for half the points. I experienced this a few times as a student and it was motivational yet forgiving to small lapses.

• 1 Nice solution. I have applied at times a variant, which is to waive the penalty the first time - but not on successive occasions. As you say, I was aiming for the motivational aspect. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 12:35
• 2 +1 for the second paragraph; this advice is especially useful in professional life. If you have a team of people waiting for 'your piece', then letting them know in advance that you won't have it ready until a day after the deadline is nothing but helpful. At that point, they can work on something else that doesn't need your piece. This applies to group projects especially (university or professional). –  Chris Cirefice Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 15:27

I'd like to add my two cents as a current student with three years of college behind me. In my experience, I've always preferred having a deadline of midnight to a deadline of 10pm because during the school year, I'm often up until midnight regardless, and sometimes my workload requires me to prioritize my assignments in such a way that many things get submitted in the eleventh hour, so to speak. Furthermore, I tend to do much of my work in the late evening, as that's when I personally am able to focus on assignments the best. This experience comes from three years from a Computer Science undergrad, so take it with whatever that information brings. I think the deadline will mean different things to different students regardless of when it actually is, and I think students will still end up submitting just before the deadline is due, but I personally prefer midnight to 10pm.

• 3 Agreed; also as a Computer Science undergrad, our CS labs are usually just about empty between 8 PM and midnight. I don't like to work from home because there are too many distractions, and an empty CS lab at night is the perfect working environment (for me). Those are the only assignments that I put off (which is a bad idea because coding is prone to a million errors for simple mistakes), but for me it makes the most sense to do that. Midnight for me is a good deadline time. –  Chris Cirefice Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 15:29
• 1 I completely agree with the sentiment that an empty (I'll settle for simply sparsely-populated, provided I have some headphones) CS lab at night is the perfect working environment. Putting off programming assignments is awful, but I think the vast majority of CS students do so. I know I do. –  PrinceTyke Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 15:36
• @ChrisCirefice, I have fond memories of allnighters in the computer lab to which I had a key as a graduate student, as regular labs were closed and the machines weren't hopelessly overloaded at night. But there was no staff on hand to unwedge your account (happened regularly as a result of some stupid command combinations). That was time to go home ;-) –  vonbrand Commented Aug 26, 2015 at 20:37

As a PhD candidate who has taught (as in was the primary lecturer, not just a TA) and recently taken classes I have a different opinion than to move assignments to an early time, e.g. 10PM. My solution for a programming intensive class that I taught was to make the assignments always due at 5AM on Saturday. I picked Saturday specifically because if they wanted to stay up late it would not affect attending class that day. My reasoning behind the 5AM time was that the time you make assignments due can actually relate to your late policy.

By making assignments due at 5AM on Saturday I could be very strict about late assignments. My late policy was simple: it's late, it's a zero grade, no exceptions . I had a script that would grab all the assignments at 5:02AM (okay so they got a 2 minute window) and that was the only thing I would look at. If they submitted at 5:04AM it was never graded. If a student would come back and complain that they just missed the deadline my response was simple:

Look you had all night to work on the assignment and you obviously had to stay up extremely late which means you didn't budget your time well or you thought it would be so simple you could do it in a night. Both of those assumptions were wrong. I hope for the next assignment you do not make the same mistake.

Finally, I had a draconian late policy (which might be a bit off topic to the question but is relevant to my answer) for a very simple reason. As a TA who has had to grade countless number of homework assignments, you spend probably about 25% to 50% of your time dealing with the 5% of the assignments that were late, either because you have to schedule a demo on a different day than the rest, or you have to go back to problems to see how you previously took points of for a (semi-)wrong answer, etc. This is a huge unnecessary drain on human resources and can greatly affect research progress. Now this usually doesn't matter if the assignment is just 5 minutes late but by having a strict late policy I avoided all the: "it was only a day late can I get partial credit", arguments and those assignments do add an unnecessary burden on grader/TA.

And as for how this policy works in practice. Per semester, I usually have only one student submit one assignment that is just barely late, say submitted after 5AM and before 5:30AM. The rest get a very clear picture.

I should add that this policy did result in piazza , which we used for class communication, exploding the night the assignment was due but I made it very clear to the students that after 9PM I was not answering any piazza or email questions. If they wanted to use piazza to ask each other questions that was fine but I did not participate.

• 1 Yours seems like yet another good justification for moving the deadline into the middle of a night. The only slight disadvantage that I could see with having it on a Saturday night is that (probably (?)) you aren't going to grade the assignments on Sunday, anyway, and some students may specifically plan to use their weekend, including Sundays, for working on assignments. On the other hand, it might of course help them arrive at a work-on-Saturday-get-a-free-Sunday schedule to some extent. –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:51
• 5 @O.R.Mapper actually it was due on Saturday 5AM specifically so I could use the weekend to grade and have the grades given back by Monday, when the class would meet. This reaffirmed the "its done don't talk to be about an extension" mindset. You could push it back 24 hours so it was due on Sunday at 5AM, same idea basically. –  missimer Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:55
• Oh, and one remark on your text: I take it "piazza" is the name of your online submission system, but it suddenly appears somewhat out of nowhere in your last paragraph. –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:18
• 2 @ALANWARD actually the assignments were somewhat large, 3-4 weeks, but I did automate some of the grading as it was a programming class. I would argue that it would work if it took longer to grade as that was not a key thing in my experience just a nice bonus, but I can't say with any level of certainty. If the assignments took longer to grade, perhaps students would argue for the assignment to be extended to include the weekend. –  missimer Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 20:01
• 1 5am on Saturday morning seems an excellent time. Nobody can claim with a straight face that they intended to work until five minutes before the deadline and were a bit too late if the deadline is at 5am in the morning. –  gnasher729 Commented Aug 8, 2015 at 8:26

Without getting into considerations on whether students should plan better [...] would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep.

Most likely, yes, students on average would get more sleep. I was TAing a class last term (a computer science class for 4th-year undergraduate students in college), the weekly assignment deadline was 10 AM on Sunday. Here is the typical submission time cumulative distribution we would get:

As we discussed with the professor when to set the deadline, we simply based our decision on when the assignments would be graded, and left students freedom to organize their schedule. While some need to sleep early, others prefer to work at night.

• 4 Please, is the graph cumulative? Does it show number of submissions submitted until time t or number of submissions submitted around time t ? –  yo' Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 7:56
• 1 @yo' cumulative –  Franck Dernoncourt Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 15:44

I suggest the opposite course of action by moving the deadline further into the night. Set it at a time where no-one voluntarily would want to hand in their work. In my opinion, that is the best incentive to have them reconsider their personal scheduling.

As for the online system, you write:

The impression that is perceived is that the online nature of the submission system makes students take slightly more liberties with deadlines than when assignments had to be handed in, in a face-to-face situation

I suspect this is coupled to how the online system is generally presented, as I have made the opposite experience. We generally communicate a very strict "hand in via the system, or do not hand in at all" policy. That is, e-mails will generally not be accepted as an alternative to submission via the system (as long as the system is not actually having internal technical issues). As opposed to e-mails, where there is always a certain leeway for asking for exceptional treatment along the lines of "the e-mail sent at 09:59 was routed in a way so it only arrived at 10:01", when the online system is announced to close down at 10, it will automatically close down at 10 (ideally, while displaying the server time in its web-based interface). This way, non-uniform acceptance of delayed submissions between different instructors for one class is avoided.

although it is clear that even then there will always be a certain percentage of people with difficulties respecting deadlines

Indeed, unfortunately, that is unavoidable - but as being able to stick to deadlines is one of the factors expected of a professional, these people simply will not get their degree in the end.

would changing deadline times from midnight to, for example, 10 p.m. be a good move from the standpoint of their getting enough sleep (moral considerations welcome) and actually attending class at the beginning of the next day?

I would somewhat doubt it. A pattern that I seem to perceive in people around me, both students and non-students, is that either they work until late at night and are very exhausted from that, or they work slightly shorter, are not totally exhausted ... and instead stay up doing whatever they like doing until they are equally exhausted. Maybe yours is not even the only deadline in the same evening, and changing your deadline only changes the order in which the tasks will be treated. I simply do not see a strong connection between your submission deadline and the time they actually go to bed.

EDIT: Reading Ángel's answer made me aware that it cannot be taken for granted in an online submission system that students can replace their submission once they have uploaded something. I consider such a feature essential. I am fully in favour of encouraging students to plan thoroughly and be on time, but if a satisfactory submission that solves the declared task has been made well within the deadline, I see no point in disallowing the respective student from replacing it with an updated version that is even a bit more tidy or well-explained.

• Interesting take on the problem. You make an assessment of the email system that corresponds very well to what we have observed here: it is just does not precise enough (as regards timing) to use it for submissions. However, as regards enforcing a very strict system, unfortunately some excuses will inevitably be receivable ("my father just died" has happened to me - and it was actually true :-( ). So, we are back to the dilemma of where do we draw the line between receivable and non-receivable reasons. Hmmm... some flexibility seems unavoidable. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:08
• @ALANWARD: Well, it may be a question of how obvious the path to stating the excuses are. E-mail is a means of communication, and accordingly, students may readily use it not only to submit their homework, but also to communicate why it is arriving late. A web-based submission form that does not allow for any "message", on the other hand, may not to the same extent signal readiness to accept any additional information, and it is primarily only students that actually have compelling reasons for excuses that will, in addition to the submission, send a message some other way. With that said, ... –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:11
• ... in cases like the one you alluded to we usually do not extend the submission deadline, but rather tell the respective people to wait until the end of the semester. Should they be missing points compared to the score required for "passing" the course, we can work something out then (e.g. a brief oral exam, or an extra task, ...). That minimizes the administrative hassle and does not imply any penalty for the student. (Of course, it works only if the overall course result is binary, or discrete enough for a missing submission not to have any effect.) –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 14:14
• @O.R.Mapper, passing is not sufficient for most students in the US. Grades are basically numerical scores in the end, so good students have the right to try to maximize them. I agree that we can accommodate true emergencies, but it often has to be in a way equivalent to them having handed in on time. –  Bill Barth Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 15:57
• @BillBarth: In such a case, a more immediate solution is probably adviseable indeed. In my place, the system mostly works by each course coming with assignments during the semester from which a score can be accumulated, and only if a minimum score is reached from those assignments (thus making this a binary choice), the student is allowed to take the exam on the course, which will then result in a grade (a numerical score) that will form a part of the final degree grade (also a numerical score). Hence, there are some places where binary decisions sometimes appear, as a preliminary step. –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:07

Remember: it's not your duty to clean your students noses and make sure they submit everything on time or weeks before the deadline. If you want to be merciful you can apply increasing penalties or you can set a hard cutoff if you're not feeling merciful. You'll probably get less pleading emails and headaches if you apply a sliding scale of penalties but it's up to you and you shouldn't feel you have to.

You have no duty to hand everyone a pass. Don't feel bad if some people screw themselves over by not submitting on time.

I encountered lots of variation as a student and have few strong feelings about it though I always somewhat preferred late-night deadlines because I worked better in the evening.

As long as the deadlines don't change: the only time a deadline ever pissed me off was when the professor kept changing it. 3 weeks, no 2 weeks, no 4 weeks, no 1 week etc.

• 2 You have no duty to hand everyone a pass. He is being paid to teach them. So you could say it is his duty to have as many pass as possible. Every failed student is a failed teacher, to some degree. –  Jonathon Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 17:37
• 3 @JonathonWisnoski no, if he was teaching 4 year olds that might be true but at collage the students are adults. He's being paid to provide an opportunity to learn and an opportunity for the person to prove they've learned. If people don't take one or the other opportunity when provided with a fair chance that is 100% on them. Universities also provide a third service to the rest of society: They certify that their graduates were competent enough to pass a university course. If they pass someone too inept to hand in assignments they've failed utterly in that last duty. –  Murphy Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 19:16

I have dealt with this issue in setting closing times for Webwork assignments, which is a kind of online Content Management System specific to mathematics.

After having tried out various times, I have converged on 7pm. Why?

Originally I had it due at 5pm. There is something about 5pm that is hard to complain about: in the US it is widely regarded as the end of the work day. It is the latest in the day you could set a meeting or an appointment without apologizing or confirming in advance that it is okay. There is a wide cultural feeling that people should be working until 5pm, at which point they want to go home.

Well, I said hard to complain about. The complaints I got were that people were submitting their solutions at 4:59:47 and not getting accepted by the system. Such complaints are very hard to verify (especially if you don't try) and pretty annoying. So what I said was, "You should think of the assignment as being due at 5pm and work accordingly. The extra two hours is a grace period that will nullify any technical difficulties."

Two other benefits of having roughly this due time:

1) If students want to ask questions before it's due (or rather, until 5pm), those questions will come during my normal work day. I might get a chance to answer them, and I certainly will not resent them. It can be annoying to get an email at 11:47pm for an assignment which is due at midnight with the implication that if you do not reply in time you are impeding their learning.

2) I post the solutions after a two hour delay. This time frame makes it more feasible to push back the due date a few hours before the deadline if that really seems like a good idea. If the due time were, say, 3 am, this would not be as convenient.

• 6 As a current student and full time worker I think 5 pm is way too early for a due date, this would force me to have to finish the assignment the night before because I work all day. I think midnight is much more flexible and fair to night owls like me –  reggaeguitar Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 15:41
• 7 @reggaeguitar: Yes, part of the point of this due time is to discourage students from waiting until the last day. There is no problem in finishing the assignment the night before. The number of late nights that you have to do the assignment is the same. –  Pete L. Clark Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 15:55
• 2 Also, I should clarify that this policy was for a course taught in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Georgia. Students who work all day could not attend such courses, since they are only scheduled during the 8am-5pm work day. –  Pete L. Clark Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:00
• 3 I've been a procrastinator my whole life and never run into problems because of it; I wait until the last day for literally all of my assignments. In my opinion the teacher's job is to teach, not to "discourage students from waiting until the last day". –  reggaeguitar Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:09
• 10 @reggaeguitar: Many instructors believe that encouraging students to spend more time rather than less engaging the material is one of the most important parts of the teaching process. If you stay in academia long enough, you will unavoidably receive assignments that it is literally impossible to complete in a single day, e.g. a PhD dissertation. Even as an undergraduate, if you never receive assignments that require more than one day of work, you are probably missing out on some important learning experiences. Consider whether you are taking courses that really challenge you. –  Pete L. Clark Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 16:17

The system is flexible precisely for allowing that. For those 65% students sending in-the-hour, you can't know if they did it at 23:00 or if they had the assignment ready in their hard disk for a week, but didn't hand in until then.

I agree they are probably doing the work at 23:00, but a big point to take into account shall be their other duties . If yours was their only commitment, the graphic would probably change, but other subjects will be placing their own tasks, they may be practising sports, etc.

The main reason for delaying a task was having many other assignments due earlier. I should also note that if you open a task before it has been fully explained, it will actually deter from trying to complete it early, since you transmit the idea that "it can't be done yet".

I would keep the late hour, or perhaps even move it later (the 5 AM proposal is a good idea).

(Hint: Never place a deadline at day X at 00:00 but to day X-1 at 23:59, there's a big UI factor there)

Another option I initally liked was to place it at 7:59 the next day (just before the begin of the next day), but it has the drawback that you may delay the "final submit" when you wake up, and fail for a "computer error". OTOH, you may allow that way that they can hand it in manually to you the next day (or if your class is at 11:00, the deadline could be at 10:59, thus you can start the class asking for phisical submission of anyone that otherwise failed).

Another point to ids that you should allow, if supported by your platform, multiple "draft" uploads. Make clear that you won't be viewing them (until the deadline passes). Thus, you can submit the almost-ready work, and if there's a catastrophic failure after it gets the final revision, the draft would be considered final (you may eg. miss some spell-checking fixes).

A problem I identified is that as you are only allowed to submit once, you delay for the final version, even if it's almost ready, and then problems kick-in like "it takes too long to upload", "you included too many graphics in png, and the generated file is now over the size limit" (and you end up rushing to change all of them to jpeg). Limits which are not always clearly stated (eg. an email filesize limit, the webmail taking forever for accepting an upload...).

I would also accept that they commit a hash of their work in case they have some upload problem (although your students need to be a bit computer-savvy for that). [They provide before the deadline a hash of the file they are going to turn in, so there's no way they can provide a different file later, even if the upload fails at that point in time]

If you want to encourage early submission, I would provide bonus points for submitting early. Sending an automatic reminder to people who hasn't submitted yet may also improve the submission times (the right timing is very important here, though. The due date shouldn't be far away, and the email should be received at an , you are unlikely to remember at home -or in the weekend!- the email reminder received on Monday morning).

PS: There are cases where the students program meeting during a break previous to the class for doing the task, so I don't think it is right to consider that they take "more liberties with [online] deadlines than when they are handed in in a face-to-face situation".

• I somewhat disagree with your examples for other duties. While it is true there are also other courses with assignments as a part of the studies, at least at my place, university rules generally make it very clear that studying a major is a full-time job that must be granted the first priority in the student's life. Part-time jobs, if any, and hobbies such as practising sports have to be scheduled in a way so as to not conflict with the university courses. At least in such a setting, only another university assignment can serve as a valid excuse. Good point about the option to submit ... –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:43
• ... several versions of an assignment, though. In my answer , I had taken that option for granted, but I will add a remark that such a feature is essential and should always be there. –  O. R. Mapper Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 18:44
• 2 @O.R.Mapper, I was not talking about additionally having a job, but different subjects, all of them setting tasks and fighting for the student time. At least in my experience, teachers tend to be completely unaware of each other assignments, and there's not even one with a whole view of the students duties (even for a "classic" students with the expected subjects). –  Ángel Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:28
• @O.R.Mapper And I mentioned sports as a reason for scheduling the assignments late at night. So, with the original midnight deadline, you could plan ahead and probably prefer to practise X at 7pm, after all university courses, and do the assignment later at night, instead of doing the assignment early and playing football at 1am ;) –  Ángel Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:32
• Interestingly enough, I can take your comments to heart since I have recently passed another Master's at an online university. This last semester I had four subjects. Most assignments were due on precisely the same day, and the others within a three-day window. So, I agree teachers do not (and perhaps cannot) reliably take into account other subjects' calendars. This is perhaps an area where online systems should allow us to better synchronize, but the underlying problem is complex when handling a large number of subjects and an even larger number of students. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:57

I think midnight is reasonable. I've been known to set certain cut off times with the same thing in mind. My students had to have their online workbooks done by 2:00 am when I started realizing some of them were working on them all night long the night before the test (traditionally due by the start of the test). Because our department policy was 50% late credit for those assignments, I would tell them to just stop at 2:00 and get sleep and take the test fully rested, and finish up their (now late) work the next day.

Back in the day, I'd tend to turn in papers at the last minute, but only because I wanted to have the maximum amount of "rest time" between writing it and doing a final check for those typos you can only find after removing yoursef a bit, so I'd caution against saying they're rushing the writing bit just because they turn it in at the last minute.

The only way you can address people trying to rush to finish an assignment is to have periodic due dates for particular elements of the paper. Not knowing your subject, you could do something like this (not necessarily in sequential days, of course):

• Day 1: general topic defined
• Day 2: preliminary bibliography
• Day 3: 25% ish written
• Day 4: 75% ish written
• Day 5: Completed copy

The first four days could just be checks (rather than graded) so as to not add to your workload.

• OK, basically you are giving the student a bit of extra guidance as to how to manage their time doing the final assignment. This is certainly actually quite helpful and necessary for some students, but perhaps a tad complicated since you now need to think about late submissions for each element of the paper. What happens if the general topic is still in a state of limbo on the day the bibliography is due? Can the students submit the two together? Must they? Decisions, decisions... ;-) –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 19:46
• 2 Do not do this except for very long assignments, and do not do this unless you plan on giving the students feedback on each submission they can use to improve the next (and final) product. Don't assume you can manage your student's time better than they can themselves. They have a lot more information about how they work and their schedule than you ever can. I worked full time to pay the mortgage and feed the kids when I was in school. Any attempts at help like this generally resulted in more late (or sleepless) nights as it forced me to work on the instructor's schedule rather than my own. –  Mr.Mindor Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 22:36
• @Mr.Mindor if a student has a personal situation and communicates it with me in advance, I'm generally willing make reasonable exceptions to policy for them. But when I've tested distributed due dates versus the single one, student evals (and, honestly, quality of work) pushed me towards preferring distributed dates for work. If due dates posted well in advance, a working student can get things done likewise well in advance or make any other adjustments they need. –  user0721090601 Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 23:09

I don't think you should be choosing between 10pm and midnight at all; deadlines should not be in the middle of the night, or the small hours of the morning, or at the weekends or... any time outside a standard working day.

Students are not just at university to get grades; they are also preparing for the rest of their lives in employment and society at large. Also, on the whole, university is not a hobby, it is a full-time job. The messages I'm hearing from your question (and some of the answers) is that it is reasonable to expect to not complete your work until the middle of the night, that it is reasonable to expect others to continue working long after they should have gone home, and that expectations should be adjusted to fit your personal preferences. The last of these will not be true when they start being paid. The other two I personally think are negatively affecting our society. I've become aware of a battle quietly raging over whether it is acceptable to not work overnight, at the weekend and while on holiday.

• Indeed, some active professionals seem be "on duty" 24h/24 and not to have much time for rest and private life at all. I agree this is somewhat not fair. However, I would also like to point out that a student's timetable will typically show some 20+ hours of class, which is not a full work day. If students choose to program their personal study and homework within the 9-to-5 span, fair play to them - they are showing self-discipline which will probably end up in good results. But if they prefer working at night ... I guess I agree with many that is not my business. –  ALAN WARD Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 7:26
• Sorry, no, this is not how it works at many places. University is worse than the true company quite often in that they put really varying workload on the students. Sometimes you get loads of free time, and sometimes you work hard and you can't get around it. Ignoring this as a teacher is plain wrong. Many people simply do work late nights and for students, this is more than usual. It is also given by the fact that at their age, they easily get used to such lifestyle etc. -- this is also not true in industry. –  yo' Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 7:54
• None of that has anything to do with setting a deadline at a sensible time of day rather than in the night time. You can do your work in the night if you want, but you have to do it the night BEFORE the deadline. arguing that the workload varies for students is not relevant to moving a deadline by a few hours, if they're getting at least a week to do the work. –  Jessica B Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 18:38
• And the reason many academics work all night and weekend is it's the only time they can get on with their jobs without students pestering them about the assignments. –  Jessica B Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 18:39
• 2 Young people are typically on a later schedule than older adults, which is one reason they shouldn't be coerced into a 9-5 schedule. –  user18072 Commented Aug 9, 2015 at 22:28

Personally, from my experience as a student, I think midnight is a good deadline. Many students have jobs and other obligations and a midnight deadline gives them time to come home from work, have dinner and unwind and then spend a few hours double checking the assignment before they hand it in.

Moving the deadline to 10pm may not give enough time to students who work.

• 2 well, they have got enough time ... the day before ... and the day before that ... and ... –  yo' Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 7:54
• Almost all comments here from students state that they like to proofread or double check before handing in. I was not referring to actually doing the assignment but just a double check. –  confused Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 17:02

I recommend that you set the deadline to the time that makes the most sense for you. Arbitrarily setting it earlier or later has no effect on student's time management skills.

As an example, I used to set online homework deadlines to be one hour before the class in which we would go over them started. That way, students wouldn't be trying to work on them until the last minute and would be able to get to class on time. That wasn't out of concern for the students - it was for me. I didn't want to deal with "I was doing the homework" as an excuse, or even a temptation, for being late.

Likewise, setting the deadline earlier would have no benefit to me, and would be arbitrary. I don't know what is going on in my students lives, and giving them the maximum possible time to finish the assignment gives them the freedom to manage their time as they see fit.

The only time I deviated from these rules are when I wanted to make sure that multiple classes had the same amount of time to finish an assignment. In that case, it was still for my convenience, since I wanted to use the homework as an evaluation tool and keeping the length of time to work on it consistent helped with that.

If you think about it, the "real world" works this way too - deadlines are not typically set for the convenience or out of concern for the person doing the work. They are there because someone else (the person determining the deadline) needs the work done by a certain time, or something bad will happen.

That said, it is hard to imagine a situation where "at midnight" is a deadline that makes sense for either you or the students.

• This. If you plan to start grading them at 4pm on tuesday, then that is the deadline. –  RemcoGerlich Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 9:48

Having implemented a 10 pm deadline, I think it works fine. I have two comments to make:

• There is no "neutral" answer here. By selecting an hour you are necessarily nudging students in one direction. We cannot get away with this . I suggest you nudge them towards more sleep, also because of point 2.
• I would be very annoyed if another professor puts a deadline that nudges students to have a short night before my class. Students might skip my lecture or be tired at it for working close to the deadline. As such, I think it is a good practice, for solidarity with other courses, to set an earlier rather than later deadline.

Got interested at the point "Moodle-type" (system); If possible, I would recommend keeping midnight and removing the "hard" deadline, i.e. people can still submit after the deadline, but will be highlighted (at least that's how it works in Moodle) and disable the assignment some time later (e.g. the next day), but state that submissions after the deadline will not be accepted. Why?

• 5min off doesn't matter: you can overlook anyone who has a slow connection / forgot to check the clock on their "final sprint" / or whatever
• If someone submits way too late, you can either outright ignore the submission or reduce their points by some value / percentage (e.g. 10% per day)
• Midnight is feasible for some nights-but-not-overnights-action, so people "learn" there is a deadline, but still can act a litlle short-term-ish

There will be people deliberately abusing this, but in the end, they (could) end up with 0 points.

Seen & used this approach in a few courses (both as student and teacher) and had little to no problems with it.

Clarification Note: I also rarely started grading 1 or 2 days after the deadline, if you cannot afford such a time-frame, such a "tolerant" approach might not be suitable.

Submission time may or may not have anything to do with when a student STARTS the assignment, so even the students turning it in at the last minute may not be under pressure.

As long as you give reasonable deadlines and clearly post them to avoid "gotcha" situations, any deadline you give is certainly fair.

Personally, I usually base deadlines on my needs, but make every effort to give the students the most time I can without creating a burdensome situation for myself or my TAs. For example, if I'd like the TAs to be grading over the weekend, I'll usually make the due date late Friday PM. This way, the TAs have time to assemble their weekend work, and if there are students (actually, teams in my case) that need to be tracked down because there was a problem with the submission, there's still time to do it without impacting the work flow.

• 2 A different issue is whether it is reasonable to expect TAs to grade over the weekend. –  J W Commented Aug 7, 2015 at 17:16

You could also consider setting two deadlines: one deadline for an initial submission, and a second deadline for the final submission. More students might submit the final version shortly after the second deadline, since they would have received a reward: I already completed that much of it .

• 3 You then need to clearly define what counts as an initial submission. Is a header file enough for a programming exercise? What if it doesn't compile? And if you do so, then you essentially turned the assignment into two assignments with separate deadlines. –  liori Commented Aug 6, 2015 at 23:20

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I don’t understand my assignment and it’s due tomorrow! What should I do?

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