A random deadline to complete a task, which has no real world consequences. For example, your office sets Monday as the deadline on all canned
food donations for charity , but the box just sits there until Friday, which is the actual
day they planned on taking it to the food
bank.
"Hey bro, did you get your weekly report done for the big
boss? He needs it
today!"
"Naaah, it's only Wednesday. Wednesday's an artificial deadline, because he doesn't
even send those reports to corporate for another week."