“Ughh! Life is hard already, why create deadlines to make it harder?”
I’m sure some of us are stressed out and wish the deadline would be postponed. Why not meet the deadline instead of making excuses?
It is synonymous with asking for an extra life when you know everyone is going to die anyway.
Managing deadlines and meeting targets can be overwhelming. Deadlines can be scary but they are unavoidable as they are lifelines and very important for productivity in our lives.
In this article, I’d proffer a few ways to manage deadlines efficiently;
1. Prioritize
How important are the tasks at hand? How fast should they be completed? These questions should be asked and answered because these answers would help you prioritize the more important tasks and break large tasks down into smaller and more manageable activities. Thus, speeding up the process of meeting deadlines.
2. Set Realistic Goals
How realistic are our deadlines? Do we plan to ask a dog to roar when it can only bark? These set deadlines, are they too absurd? Get a note and jot these deadlines down.
Do a survey and figure out the time it would take to complete the tasks at hand and set deadlines based on that. Making unrealistic deadlines would drain your energy and double the stress needed for performance during these tasks.
3. Avoid Procrastination
Procrastination is a self-defeating behaviour pattern, it affects our work pace and influences us to put off things that we know might cost us. Yes, it’s pretty hard to stay focused when we have difficult tasks at hand.
It becomes overwhelming and the urge to push them aside seeps in, the ability to control it and stay focused helps us to meet up with set deadlines. We should see it as a race to success, do not let procrastination beat us to it.
4. Embrace Time Management Technology
Furthermore, there are severally time management tools that can be used in managing deadlines efficiently. Among many include;
This is a time management technique that involves working with intervals. Here, you can have short breaks to refuel and continue.
This is also a very good tool to optimize to meet deadlines. It’s similar to making a scale of preference but here it’s work-related. You categorize the tasks at hand based on how important and urgent they are.
Other productive tools that help are;
- Having a daily planner
With our schedule in place with the proposed completion time, it would be easier to access these tasks and complete them in time.
- Calendar reminders
The constant reminder on completion time would help jeer us into action and make meeting deadlines easier.
Conclusion
Deadlines can be draining, exhausting, and challenging but don’t keep working like a clock. Instead, use productive tools like The Pomodoro Technique to meet deadlines. This will help you take tiny steps back to refuel.
Be sure to take due rest, find ways to relax and recharge; take walks, meditate, and engage in hobbies you take an interest in. Create a self-care routine that can help you feel more productive and focused when working on tasks.
Most importantly, Embrace happiness; doing tasks unhappily wouldn’t make us feel motivated to complete or even bother to do them. The need to meet deadlines is scarier than the deadlines itself, don’t put too much pressure on yourself.
As you already know how important these steps are towards the actualization of our goals. It would go a long way if we diligently and repeatedly do them to achieve our goals.
Researched by Sandra Iloh
