Ivan Sutherland in his essay, Technology and Courage, describes how deadlines offer external encouragement in getting work done on time. He uses the word - "charette"; to refer to the final, intensive effort to finish a project before a deadline".

All of us are familiar with the frantic activity that precedes a project delivery, a wedding, a trip, a test etc and now we have a name for it :). If we look around us, we would notice that some people work only en charette i.e. when given a deadline. When working alone we have to be on time to save our reputation. When in collaboration we tend to be on time partly due to peer pressure and partly to avoid any embarrassments at the hands of others. We would agree that charette comes into play in most of the projects because somewhere during the project we lose the sight of the deadline.

Smacklet provides deadlines. It gives a reminder every half an hour to self review the work we have been doing. These reminders serve as mental deadlines and keep us focused. By the end of the day we realize we have done a good deal of work. We no longer wonder where the day went since everything is documented in our own words. We know with our star ratings what part of the day we had been most productive. Hopefully with these daily deadlines we would have less distance to travel when en charette.