Never wait until the last-minute on your deadlines.

If you’re like most, you probably wait until time is running out before starting those important tasks.

 “Can you get that to me by the end of the day?” isn’t a request many employees like to hear.

But for many people, having shorter deadlines instead of longer ones —

 “Do you think you can do that by the end of the week?” — might actually help them complete a task and see their work as being less difficult.

Yet, staying ahead of deadlines is a powerful productivity tactic that will make you more productive while reducing stress at the same time.

It is interesting how numb most individuals and companies have become to deadlines.

Deadlines become extended deadlines. Final warnings become final warnings. In general, things are not being accomplished, and to add insult to injury, the question is then pondered, “Why are my peers and competitors out-pacing me?”

It seems that “deadlines have become guidelines” rather than something to be taken seriously.

Yet, the answer is simple. Work needs to be done, and tasks completed on time. When deadlines are ignored, self-inflicted stress and additional work is created.

Life has a way of throwing the unexpected at you, usually right before a deadline.

If you wait until a due date is upon you, then you won’t have time to react when life throws a curveball. And while it is easy to use these “happenings” as an excuse, you won’t be in the situation if you finish ahead of time.

If being under a deadline is stressful, then being ahead of one… feels great. And it truly does. When you are ahead of schedule and ahead of due dates, you can enjoy your work more.

Disclaimer: The information on this POST is not intended or implied to be a substitute for professional advice. The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. All content, including text, graphics, images and information, contained on or available through this article is for general information purposes / educational purposes only, and to ensure discussion or debate.

Thank you ….If you have ever rushed to finish a deliverable you know that you aren’t producing your best work. You may even still be working on it when you turn it in. However, if you finish ahead of a deadline, you will have time to revisit your work for improvements and corrections.

There are occasions in life — both business and social — when you need a deadline. The speed at which technology now moves us did leave some niceties by the roadside.

However, sometimes we need to know something by a certain date. In some situations, we need to know how to ask nicely.

Why does politeness matter, though, when we ask?

You work late most days. Always burning the “midnight oil,” as my dad used to say.

Stressed and always up against a deadline.

Yet, you manage to pull a masterstroke each time. A rabbit out of the hat. A last-minute rabbit, but nailed all the same. And when people ask you about it, you say, “I do my best work under pressure.” 

Sorry to say, you don’t. 

Deadlines are a part of work life. A big customer presentation on Thursday, a report to be filed by Monday or a meeting to prepare for.

Do you want to add a word or two?

Deadlines. We wouldn’t be without them. Companies could not function without them.

Yet there we are again and again and again, working right up to the wire, supposedly doing our best work.

At some point in the past, we have all likely worked on something ahead of time. For some reason that we cannot fathom, but we managed it nevertheless.

Let’s say it was a PowerPoint presentation for a client. We had two weeks until the big important pitch.

Maybe we found ourselves working on the slides one week before the deadline.

It’s easy to overestimate the amount of time it will take you to get something done.

Whether you’re trying to impress a client or you simply underestimated the amount of work a certain project required, it’s important to be realistic about deadlines for the sake of yourself and your client. 

Because if you end up missing a deadline, you’ll not only be disappointed in yourself but your client’s perception of you will likely also be affect. 

To avoid situations like these, always give yourself extra time to work on a project. That way if something unexpected happens, you luckily have an extra few days to fix it. 

Your Comments……

Then the inevitable happened. We started tinkering.

“That font could be bigger,” “I’ll just adjust those images,” “Maybe we should have a better theme.”

And then it really happens:

 “Hold on, wouldn’t it be great to include a piece of research to really drive home the messages about shoppers’ needs?

Can we get a big piece of research completed with 200 customers by next Thursday?”

The trouble is that for something important, like a big pitch to a customer, we want to do our very best.

Our very best means that, given all the time in the world, we have a lot of great ideas we could make happen. Things we want to include to make it even more compelling.

This is why we often work under pressure up to the deadline. We might not trust ourselves not to do this. If we have the time, we’ll use it.

Once we hear the presentation date, our subconscious is busy calculating now until the deadline.

Calculating and working out the time to do our current workload, the time we have available until the deadline, meetings to attend, emails to write and reply to, stuff at home, etc., etc.

The final result is that, if we start on Tuesday at 6 p.m. and pull an all-nighter that gives us 13.5 hours to screech home to the deadline at 7:30 a.m. on Wednesday!

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