If it wasn’t for deadlines, most of us wouldn’t get much done.
The prehistoric humans who discovered agriculture learned early that deadlines were important. If crops weren’t planted early in the spring season, there would be no harvest in the summer and fall, and the village would starve.
In the publishing industry, if articles and ads aren’t ready in time for an issue of a publication, they just aren’t included. If a reservation was made for an ad, you pay for it whether it’s included or not.
Those are “hard deadlines”, or true “drop dead” dates.
Hard deadlines are great for creating the internal pressure to get things done. Do you remember coping with the due dates for essays in high school? On more than one occasion, didn’t you procrastinate until the day it was due? But you did get it done. (Maybe not as well as you would have liked.)
Authors use “soft deadlines” to assure their work is completed. For example, Stephen King habitually sits at the keyboard and cranks out a predetermined number of pages each day to regularly produce best-selling novels.
A “soft deadline” is one you make for yourself. The consequences aren’t as serious for missing a soft deadline, but they keep you on schedule.
When we have a major project with a hard deadline, it’s usually best to break it down into smaller “chunks”. It could be a predetermined amount of time each day, or a milestone, like a chapter of a book.
Sometimes you might create pieces to be assembled later, like researching a subject for an advertisement, creating bullet points, creating a unique selling proposition, creating headlines and subheadlines, creating an offer, etc. By focusing on the pieces, one at a time, you avoid being overwhelmed by a major task.
Large businesses use management tools like PERT charts and Gantt charts to visualize the steps required to accomplish for a project, in what sequence they need to be done, when they need to be done and who is responsible to see that they are done.
Mike Vance, who was an early dean of Disney University and author of Think Out of the Box, taught displayed thinking, using corkboard panels and index cards. It was a flexible way to show the steps of a project. He borrowed the idea from movie story boards, which showed animators or directors the scenes to be done for a movie.
Whatever you try to accomplish, using deadlines in your planning makes it more likely to get done.
Would you like someone to “coach” you to break down your major project and help you stay on task? Send an email to mgray@profitadvisors.com to schedule an initial discussion.