Forcing Function: Achieve Your Long-term And Short-term Goals Now

A forcing function aligns your behavior in the future by using short-term incentives as fuel for your long-term goals. It means having skin in the game. A session with a personal trainer you signed up for in advance is a forcing function for you to workout. You will likely never miss an appointment because that would mean veering from your training schedule and leaving your trainer disappointed. Think of it as a deliberate constraint that compels you to take specific actions within a set timeline. Effectively, it nudges you towards progress and ensures that execution happens.

Forcing functions work primarily because they work with short-term and long-term incentives. For example, a deadline for a project (future, mid-term) forces you to prioritize tasks (present, short-term) and focus on deliverables (future, mid-term), ensuring that daily actions contribute to a bigger goal (future long-term). In other words, immediate behaviors are aligned with future objectives. Forcing functions establish clear milestones — think of them as checkpoints — that help you observe progress over time. Think: a software development team that uses sprints — essentially short deadlines — to ensure incremental progress towards release.

These mini commitment devices generate a feeling of that “last-minute burst”. Our energy and focus spikes as the deadline approaches, pushing us to consolidate our work and make it deliverable. The pressure spurs you into intense work sessions that bring scattered pieces of a project into a cohesive whole. Put differently, they externalize your goals, make you feel accountable, and put your performance at stake. Procrastination doesn’t invade your mind when you don’t have time to wait. You don’t delay. You do. Motivation is a value function. A forcing function does that for you: (1) by revealing progress, (2) by creating accountability, (3) by generating time pressure, and (4) by giving you feedback on ways to improve.

Real-life implications of forcing functions:

• Project Management: forcing functions in the form of milestones, deadlines, and sprint reviews are integral to making methodologies like “Agile” work. Teams deliver incremental value, regularly.

• Personal Productivity: personal deadlines, like “finish this report by Friday” act as forcing functions that combat procrastination.

• Product Development: companies set release dates for products, which act as forcing functions that coordinate design, testing, and marketing department efforts for cohesive product campaigns.

• Academic Settings: coursework deadlines, thesis submissions, and grant application due dates are forcing functions that structure the work of researchers and writers.

How you can use forcing functions as a mental model: (1) limit your time — establish non-negotiable deadlines as fixed points in time to deliver work, creating urgency and a structured timeline for yourself to fight procrastination; (2) dissect those goals — divide larger objectives into small, manageable tasks with singular deadlines to build momentum throughout the process; (3) skin in the game — implement accountability via progress tracking tools, status updates, or peer reviews to adhere to the plan and see whether progress is consistent; (4) glue the pieces together — make the final phase of any project the synthesis process where information is consolidated and the components are integrated; (5) carrots and sticks — implement rewards for meeting deadlines and penalties for delays of your choice.