Tips For Dealing With And Meeting A Deadline
Your bread and butter depend on your reputation, and your reputation depends on honouring your word/deadlines.
Thinking of deadlines brings with it an impending sense of time urgency, a chronic obsession with scarcity spawns a chronic state of hurry-worry that locks you into a perpetual rush hour, even if there's no reason for it.
Constant clock-checking, zero tolerance for waiting longer than a nanosecond, the need to do everything ASAP or it's apocalypse now are some of the tell tale signs.
Time urgency is the enemy of good work and good health. No matter how out of control you feel, you can tame the beast if you learn to respect timelines/deadlines.
If you plan well, deadlines will become your friends not your foes. We all operate best within a defined framework.
Tips to tackle deadlines:
1. Reframe the panic
When planning on meeting a deadline, the usual fight or flight response will kick in. Understand that it's not the clock or the deadline that's causing the stress but what you're telling yourself about the stress.
2. Make a list of projects and deadlines in an excel sheet or paper if you prefer and respect it
This is the first step, as many people are very lax about deadlines. You have to be very serious about meeting them, and make them a priority.
Have one place that you check often to make sure you know what's due and when.
3. Have a clearly defined outcome and deadline
You and the client or your boss should both agree on a clearly defined outcome. If you turn in a project that's not what was wanted, you'll have to do extra work, meaning that you'll miss the deadline. If you're not absolutely clear what the outcome should look like, ask some questions until you are clear.
Be sure that you and the client or boss are in agreement with a specific deadline, including time of day (and factor in time zone differences as well). If the deadline is fuzzy, you will have trouble meeting it. If you aren't given a deadline, you need to ask for one.
4. Focus on the content, not the clock
Immerse yourself in the experience at hand, not in the stampede to the next item on the list. Just ensure that you have blocked off adequate time. When you're going to work on a step, be sure to have it blocked off on your day's schedule. If you're not blocking off time for your most important tasks, you're probably not getting the important stuff done.
5. Cut clock-checking by 75 percent
Watching the clock wastes time and jacks up panic. Take off your watch, if you have to. Put a Post-It note over the clock on the computer monitor.
6. Factor in a cushion
It's wise to build in a cushion for your deadline. To get a clear idea of how long a project will take, break it down into smaller pieces. And for each piece, add a small cushion to your time estimate. Then add up the time estimates of all the pieces, and you'll have a cushion built in.
7. Don't over-commit
One of the biggest causes of missed deadline is committing to more than he can handle. Learn to say no if you cannot commit to finishing a project on time. Committing and then not keeping your word makes you lose face.
9. Negotiate and meet a second deadline
Learn from your past mistakes. If you bust a deadline, take a few minutes to analyze what went wrong and how you can avoid that in the future. Time urgency is aggravated by the need for instant results and zero tolerance for anything in the way of that. Stay calm in the face of delays and setbacks.
If you absolutely cannot make deadline (you probably over-committed), you should contact your client or boss and negotiate a second deadline. It's much better to do this than to let the deadline go by without any communication. Whatever you do, be sure to meet this second deadline. Two missed deadlines in a row is bad news for your reputation.
10. Still the mind
The engine of time urgency is a racing mind, which is the enemy of efficiency and deadline adherence. Meditation or yoga can retrain your brain to retain focus amid anarchy. Take breaks while you work so you can stay on track with your deadlines. Explore techniques like CBT to help reprogram your mind. When your mind is in order then dealing with deadlines is a no brainer.
Pace your self slow and steady. Anything done with a calm mind is bound to be met with success.
