Productivity Tip: Deadlines

When you’re working on a new goal or project the use of deadlines can be extremely helpful in setting a pace for the completion of your goal and enforcing it in your daily routine as something that must be done. If you leave your goals open ended and maintain the idea that they can be done “whenever” then you’ll continue to put them off until “whenever” comes around which, unfortunately, is never. With a deadline however you have a firm time-line established to keep you moving towards your goal and as your deadline grows closer and closer you’ll also be imbued with a sense of urgency.

A deadline forces you to keep focused and stay on track with your goals and it gives you a specific point to work towards. Because you know exactly when your goal has to be done by you can break it down into smaller pieces and use mini-deadlines along the way to accomplish smaller pieces of your goal as you work towards it’s overall completion. In this way your deadline pushes you forward bit by bit by encouraging you to stay on track as the completion date gets closer and closer.

Deadlines can also help you stay focused throughout the day as you move forward towards your goal simply because when you see the deadline approaching you’re more likely to stay motivated and keep on track with your goal due to the fear of not completing it by your promised deadline. This works especially well if you’ve agreed on the deadline with someone else whether that person be a boss, a coworker, a friend, or a family member.

By adding a deadline you increase the pressure on yourself to complete certain tasks (in a good way) and thereby encourage yourself to put more time and effort into making sure that they are finished by the deadline that you’ve set for yourself. The gradual effect of this is that you begin to become better and more efficient at completing tasks within a specified amount of time and if you stick at this practice long enough you can slowly increase the amount of value that you’re able to create within a certain amount of time. As you do that you become more productive and you’re able to do more work within blocks of time which means you can end up raising your income or your prices as you begin to produce more value. Being more efficient in this way also means that you can eventually begin to expand your skills in the gap of time that you have left over due to your increased productivity which in turn can also earn you more money.

Deadlines can be extremely useful when applied to a wide variety of tasks, everything from simple household chores to big business projects and if used correctly they can do a lot to increase the productivity of your work and the amount of value you’re able to create in any given amount of time.