For what it's worth:

When I was still writing grant applications, we had to get certain
parts of the application to the grants office 2 weeks before the
agency deadline.

My way of keeping myself "on target" was to do the following:

If my application was due on Feb 1, I generally started thinking
about the proposal the previous spring and, on the day after Labor
Day, I marked on my calendar -- every 2 weeks --  with a note that my
application was due November 1.  On Nov 1, I sent a good pre-final
draft to "readers" for comments and asked them to return it by Dec 1.
Then I had December (a short month because of the holidays!) and half
of January to implement the readers' suggestions, finalize the
application, and get the relevant parts of the application to the
grants office by mid January.  It's a very comfortable way to go
through the process and simply requires that you "artificially"
change your personal deadline to an earlier date and stick to that
artificial deadline.

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