Several years ago, I heard a professor say, “We have to get this done now. Tomorrow means we’re never going to get it done.” 

What the professor understood was this: when you pause (or get interrupted on) on project (or task), you open it to a chance that you won’t complete it. The less specific the deadline, the greater the risk.

The professor knew one solution to minimize incompletion risk, which is to start right away and effectively never put the project down until it’s done, pausing only for basic life functions. You see this happen all the time at hackathons. This approach doesn’t work for everyone, and comes with its own risks—namely burning out. There’s no slack in this approach. 

There’s a more sustainable way: set a deadline, write a reminder down in a place you’ll always see it, and working on it for at least 15 minutes per day. 

With this approach, you take incompletion risk as close to zero as possible. You’ll mostly be exposed to the risk when you decide whether to release on the deadline or not.

P.S., Later is good if it means better, but bad if it means never. If you’ve pushed the deadline back three times already, incompletion risk is high. You need to decide to give up or push through, and find some ways to stay accountable.