Deadlines as P-Zero
Have few deadlines, but make each one a P0 that nothing else can touch — and cut scope to hit it
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 90%
Nan Yu treats deadlines as fabrications that only become real when taken so seriously they override everything else. His policy: keep deadlines rare, and when you set one, make it a P0 — engineers on it work on nothing else, and the PM's job is to cut as much scope as possible so the team reaches a genuine yes/no ship decision. This works only because Linear ships a working version early (the 10% rule) and does almost no estimating; the early working version is what lets the future team choose to iterate or polish under deadline pressure.
Origin
Nan Yu's point of view on deadlines, tied to Linear's ship-early process; contrasts with typical drisking/estimation-heavy approaches.
Core principles
- 01Deadlines are fabrications; the only way to make one real is to treat it as a P0 that everything else yields to
- 02Have too many deadlines and none of them signal real seriousness
- 03Reserve deadlines for external marketing moments — a year has a finite number of chances to say something to your audience, and a missed slot never comes back
- 04The PM's deadline job is scope-cutting, not estimation
- 05The aim is to reach a real product you can say yes or no to — not a half-broken thing where 'yes' is impossible
How to run it
- 1
Reserve deadlines for external marketing moments
Only set a hard deadline when it maps to an external marketing exercise — a launch, a campaign, a change-log moment. A year offers ~50 weekly, 12 monthly, or 4 quarterly chances to tell your audience something; a missed one is gone.
Watch out Builders who shrug that a slipped launch date or skipped changelog doesn't matter are throwing away a finite, non-recoverable communication opportunity.
- 2
Declare it P0 from the very beginning
When you commit to a deadline, make it a P0 immediately — the engineers on it are pulled off nothing and cannot be pulled onto anything else. Commit to the fast-iterate-early process from day one.
Pro tip P0 status is how you signal to the team and stakeholders that you're genuinely serious.
Watch out You cannot invoke seriousness at the last moment; commit from the start or the deadline stays a fabrication.
- 3
Cut scope relentlessly to reach a yes/no state
As PM, continuously cut scope so that at the go/no-go moment you have a real, working product you could conceivably ship — even if it lacks features you'd wanted. The point is to earn the right to say yes or no.
Pro tip Ship a working version by the 10% mark so your future self gets to choose between another iteration and polishing to shippable — no last-minute estimation gymnastics needed.
Watch out If the thing is half-broken at the deadline, 'yes' isn't even an option — you've lost the choice.
In the wild
Rather than drisking with heavy estimation, Linear ships as early as possible: once ~10% of the time has elapsed there's a working version, so the remaining time is spent deciding whether to iterate again or polish to a shippable state.
→ The team reaches deadlines with a genuine go/no-go choice instead of a half-finished product, using almost no upfront estimation.
Common mistakes
Having too many deadlines
When everything is a deadline, none of them carry the P0 seriousness needed to actually be hit, and teams grow depressed missing dates they never took seriously.
Invoking seriousness only at the end
Trying to take a deadline seriously at the last moment fails; the P0 discipline and early-shipping have to start from the beginning.
Is it for you?
Best for
PMs and eng leaders who repeatedly miss ship dates and need a small number of credible, marketing-anchored deadlines
Not ideal for
Teams that set frequent deadlines by default, or work with no external marketing moment to anchor a genuine go/no-go decision
From the transcript
“the only way to make deadlines real is to take them so seriously that they are basically like a pzero problem”
“as a PM your job is just cut as much scope as possible to make it possible to hit that deadline”
“we do almost no estimating in order to hit deadlines what we what we do right is we ship as early as we can”
“if you miss one of those opportunities you don't get it back again you can't like time travel back”
From the episode
Linear’s secret to building beloved B2B products
Nan Yu (Head of Product)