Deadlines are brutally effective for me. They got me through my first online programming course when none of the self-paced ones did and have continued to be effective for a year and a half of self-study. I'm taking a few MOOCs right now and a week ago, I was starting to fall behind. But then I had 3 deadlines last sunday. Between Tuesday of last week and sunday at 9pm, I easily put in 30 hours of work and got mostly caught up. It was the same in college. When there's an imminent deadline, I just don't think about doing anything else. It feels great actually.