Ship dates, rules and deadlines all share one thing in common, they are your friend.
If that doesn't make sense to you, consider this, without them, you would have no direction. Consider them the same as Design Criteria. Without Design Criteria you would have no way to know what to build.
Honestly, we would love to have extra time to build, but that's because we drag our feet. No one else is to blame, not even the weather. So, how do we meet the deadline? We bust our hump for the next 5 nights. (Actually, we need ours finished for a practice session at St. Francis HS, home of the FemBots, this Saturday.) So, we bust our hump tonight and tomorrow and work with what we have Saturday, then finish everything Sunday and Monday.