A deadline is annoying, but it’s also somebody believing you’ll finish.

A due date is somebody planning around you. Setting one means assuming the thing will exist by then and building the rest of the schedule on that assumption, which is a quiet form of trust even when it turns up in an irritated email. The pressure is real, and so is the fact that nobody sets a deadline for a person they have written off.

Read the next one as being counted on rather than chased. Then break it down into what has to exist by Wednesday. Most of the dread lives in the size of the whole thing.