Maybe instead of a "jam" format to motivate indies, do a "game race" instead? Points for timeliness. Bias toward micro-games. Organized around theme or asset for creativity constraint ;)
Agreed. I'm thinking about attending one of those jams. I like tight or even unreasonable deadlines. Ordinary jobs don't give people this kind of deadlines (or if it is the compensation might be shitty).
One thing I need to learn is to create pixel Sprites quickly. Maybe there is even a way to programmatically generate some template Sprites.
I also found that hard deadlines work. The closer they are, the better they are.
Yesterday I spent just one hour to review my computer architecture mid-term. I totally forgot about the date and thought I'm going to bomb it. Eventually I did a very quick efficient review and felt very good about it.
The thing is, as you said, and as my Physics teacher said 20 years ago, that I really need to be pushed HARD to be efficient. That's why I hate assignments with long deadlines.