“The best way to get anything done is to have a tight deadline,” said a friend’s husband when we were chatting about how to make progress on a long-term study assignment she had.
My friend had given herself a target of 12 months to achieve her goal – finish studying the course, do revisions, and take the certification exam. She had also timed it so that she would take the exam in March, which is examination time in India. Her child would be studying for her annual exams, and my friend thought this would be great to get her into the mindset of prepping for the exam.
My friend and her husband were discussing a very useful strategy for getting things done: setting a deadline.
Deadlines are great. They work well to get things done.
Most of us work well with deadlines. A client deliverable cut-off timelines that are not negotiable, like filing a tax return, catching a flight, or arranging a loved one’s birthday party. We do very well where it is painful to re-negotiate, or the consequences of missing the deadline are outside our window of tolerance.
But deadlines are double-edged swords. If not handled carefully, we could end up killing ourselves with the sword.
So, how do we channel the power of deadlines while not overdoing it? Let’s find out.
The three things we’ll cover are
1. What makes deadlines work, and how is it related to biology?
2. The flipside of deadlines that leads to procrastination
3. How to harness the power of deadlines without overdoing it.
