I've always been a huge fan of deadlines. I think they're a great tool for speeding up the production process and/or overcoming creative block and avoiding procrastination.

As of recent, I've been toying with the idea of not using deadlines at all, partly because I think it introduces unnecessary creative pressure and detracts from the process.

I think there are pros and cons to both approaches:

Using a deadline means:

• You work faster and (generally) finish more music
• You place pressure on yourself (good and bad)

Not having a deadline means:

• You can get in flow more easily due to a lack of pressure
• You enjoy the process more
• It's easy to go overboard and tweak endlessly/never finish anything

I'm curious to hear your thoughts - do you use deadlines? If so, why? If not... why not?

You know, there's a lot of times where I catch myself saying "I'm going to be spending a few months on this track", and I keep telling myself to shut the hell up when I say that, because I'll always end up adding incredibly redundant things in my mixes, and I'll add redundant instruments as well.

So, personally deadlines help me, but they are very stressful.

The best thing with deadlines is to find the sweet spot. But, of course it's impossible.

People say you should try and pump out as many songs as you can when you're first starting out, and to give yourself a deadline, but that doesn't always work for me. I've been "producing" for 5 years (4 and a half years of just touching ableton/fl once a month/year), so I'm still really new to this stuff. Creating a deadline makes it hard for me to get creative and produce the tracks I like. I don't have a "deadline" but I do have a goal, which is to work X amount of hours or get X amount of X completed by the end of day.
It's also unreasonable for me to set deadlines because I don't have a lot of time to produce. I can't set long deadlines because I don't really know how long it's going to take me because it's mostly dependent on how much time I'll have throughout the month.
There are a lot of pros and cons to deadlines, but in the end it's mostly up to you to decide whether or not they work for you.

You know, there's a lot of times where I catch myself saying "I'm going to be spending a few months on this track", and I keep telling myself to shut the hell up when I say that, because I'll always end up adding incredibly redundant things in my mixes, and I'll add redundant instruments as well.

So, personally deadlines help me, but they are very stressful.

The best thing with deadlines is to find the sweet spot. But, of course it's impossible.

That's also a good point, it keeps you from adding too many things to your track that it starts to sound terrible. I don't really have that issue, but it does help if you do.

I think a mixture is better. As said above remix competitions give a good practice of getting something done in time, However when working outside of these constraints I would say I prefer working without a deadline. But when you get to a point on a track that your spending hours tweaking and not really making any difference, then wrap it up and get it out there.