I have been thinking about how great it is to have deadlines. They urge us to stop and check ourselves and our progress. We can take a look at what we have done, make necessary corrections, and focus and redirect our future work. Some of these deadlines are imposed by our work and made-up schedules, but some of them come naturally, as a part of the pulse of time.
Some of my favorites include:
Submittals – These are the specific time set aside in a project to summarize progress to date. We pull together all the ideas into the best plan we have so far. The entire team is able to take a look at progress and make sure it’s still going in the right direction. We can celebrate what is good and right, see where we may have missed the mark or not coordinated sufficiently, and where we need to focus our work in the coming weeks and months.
Weekly Team meetings – These are valuable communication tools, but they are also powerful motivators. Having them creates natural deadlines for assignments and follow-up. I love to get work done before the next meeting so I don’t have to hang my head in shame. And I really hate having something I am responsible for showing up on the agenda week after week.
End of Business (EOB) – Each work day will eventually come to an end, luckily. This creates one of my favorite deadlines – a very tangible time frame in which to get work completed. “Just get it to me by end-of-business.” This helps me and those I am working with know when smaller projects or reports can be completed. All too often, I turn this into “I’ll get that to you before I leave the office” or even “before I go to sleep”. This keeps me motivated to just keep working until I get something done.
Morning and Night – The beginning of each day allows us a fresh start. I love to take some time for myself to plan my day and think through some of the challenges I anticipate. This is a great time to prioritize what I need to get done, but also how I want to do it. What do I need to do to be better than I was in the past? Then, at some point, the day will end. I love to take another chunk of time to consider how the day went and prepare for my next day. During the regular work cycle, daily check-ups can quickly become monotonous and repetitious, but this daily check-up is just what a team needs when the work is crazy and deadlines loom. Meeting for even a few minutes daily can keep the entire team focused on the critical work that will lead to a successful completion.
What deadlines do you love? How do you use them to get your work done better?
