Essential Tips for Meeting a Deadline

We are constantly racing to meet deadlines, for assignments, projects, work, goals, and exercise. With procrastination constantly being dangled over us, we may find ourselves caught up in the middle of it all. What is the best way to have a holistic life while still meeting deadlines? Here are some essential tips for Meeting a Deadline.

Begin with the end in mind.

It is paramount to understand what the end goal is. What is the expected end result. Do you have an idea of how it is supposed to look like. For example if you are to write a project report, do you know how the report should look like? The format of the report and its components.

Beginning with the end in mind allows you to have insight on exactly what is expected. Before construction, an architect draws the plan of the house. The construction is then made towards what visualized. This is the same concept to help us excel in meeting our deadlines. We must know what the expected end is. What it is that we are required to deliver and then we can work on delivering the correct thing. Otherwise, we will be missing the mark.

Visualize the process.

Going back to the analogy of building a house, there are steps to be followed, for example leveling the land, building the foundation, making the sides beams, all these need to be followed for the construction. When we come to meeting deadlines, we need to visualize the process as well.

Have an idea of the milestones that need to be checked on the way to meeting the deadline. Visualize them and see how the project, work or assignment will eventually come together. Visualizing will also help you to notice in case something is not alright.

Make small small steps.

Now that you have visualized the process and understand the big check offs that you need to make, it is time to start working. We have the big goal, big idea, this needs to be broken down into small goals. Big goals can be intimidating. When broken down to smaller goals, they become more realistic and attainable.

For example if the goal is to create a data model to be used in analytics for a company, you can divide this into smaller chunks of Getting the data, Understanding the data, Visualizing the data, Cleaning the data, Convert the data, create a model, train the model, test the model and then measure the accuracy of the model. These small small steps are all working towards the big goal and meeting the deadline.

Get feedback.

This is a very important steps towards meeting your deadline. Feedback is relevant information or criticism that is used to gauge someone’s performance and can be used as a basis of improvement. Getting feedback after every important milestone I would say is the key.

Feedback allows you to know if you are on the correct track and gives you room to make the necessary adjustments. Getting feedback too late is a mistake that many people make, because then you have made so much progress and seeing it all go down the drain is demotivating. Therefore, get feedback every step of the way. You can consider getting feedback from a mentor as well.

Allocate time.

While making small small steps is a move in the right direction, plans are only plans until you start acting on them. You can have a very clear plan yet never actualize it. Begin the work. Allocate the time, and purposefully work on the small small tasks that you have created. Here are some tips on how to manage your time. Without the time and energy, the small small steps will only remain to be thoughts.

Develop a reward system.

We all need a tap in the back all so often. This could come from someone else acknowledging the good work we are doing or we could simply develop our own reward system. If you are wondering what this looks like, it could be as simple as a break reward. Once you are done with a task, you could take a break, walk outside, read a book, drink hot chocolate, call family or a friend. Knowing that the reward will come upon completion of the task will keep you motivated and focused. Let the rewards be something that mean a lot to you. That way, you will keep at the task because you know what awaits you upon completion.

Limit distractions.

We hate to admit how much we currently are in a distractible era. There is too much around us that is only a click away. Netflix, YouTube, Social Media and an over-flood of information. While these if harnessed properly can be factors to success, they are also major sources of distraction. Without realizing we are spending 2, 3 hours and even more on them, time which would have been allocated to meeting our deadlines. Get a grip of it, find a conducive work environment without distractions and keep working.

Cheers to meeting deadlines!

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