[dagw]

Looking back at my career, I find that understanding the reason why having this milestone done by this date is important really helped. Is it "according to our contract if we don't deliver all of this by this date, the client doesn't have to pay us anything and we'll have trouble making payroll" or "I pulled a random date out of my ass in a meeting 6 month ago, and I don't want to look bad in front of my boss by explaining that I got the time estimate wrong". In the first case we pulled out all the stops to make sure we hit the deadline, in the second case we worked at our normal pace and didn't care too much

Not all deadlines are created equal and if you have a lot of deadlines that feel random and meaningless with no consequence of missing them, then people will feel that and not take it seriously. Have deadlines that are relevant for the project, and explain the relevance of each deadline to the team, and you'll hopefully get better results.