Setting Deadlines To Reach Your Goals

When talking about chasing down our dreams, productivity is a vital topic that must be discussed.  The skill of productivity needs to be mastered if we want to make our dreams a reality. If you are struggling with your productivity or you want to level up and become more productive, continue reading this blog as we will dive into the importance of setting deadlines to reach your goals.

I have always been a productive person.  I am constantly on the move, working, meeting, building, creating, and simply just making things happen.  Everyone who knows me can see my work ethic and the crazy busy schedule that I happily embrace.Here is the issue:

While I am productive, I found that I wasn’t very efficient.  While I was constantly creating new things, I realized that everything I was creating was often not aligned to my goals, thus they were not priorities.   I would find myself working on 5 to 6 projects at once in an attempt to push them all across the finish line, usually at a slow pace (because I was doing too much).  As I started to investigate how I could build my competence in productivity, I developed and learned many new skills that have proven to be life changing.  One such skill that I have acquired is my ability to set deadlines.  In fact, I have created my own process that I have proven and my clients have demonstrated is effective in setting and sticking to realistic and challenging deadlines.

What is this process?

Glad you asked!

Setting Deadlines to Reach Your Dreams

Step 1: Create a tentative deadline with necessity

Step 2: Gain clarity on how long the project will take. (how many hours do you need to spend to complete)?

Step 3: Gain clarity on how much time you have from now until the deadline.

Step 4: Create the final deadline

Step 1: Create a tentative deadline with necessity.

The first step is to create a tentative deadline.  This is just the first step of the process, so this is not the final date, but this will get the ball rolling on finding a deadline that matters.

Do This:

• Think of a project you want to complete.
  • Got it?
  • Okay, move on.
• Look at your calendar.
  • use a planner or your phone.
• Pick a date that you want to complete the project.
  • You can pick a random date, because this is tentative.
• Ask yourself “Why do I need/want to complete the project on this date?”
  • This is an important step, because when we are creating our own deadlines the only accountability is often ourselves.  This can lead to us creating deadlines that don’t really matter.  We have to make sure we create necessity to why the deadline matters and why we must accomplish it by the date we set.

Step 2: Gain clarity on how long the project will take. (How many hours you need to spend to complete)?

The second step is to do some planning around the project.  What do you need to accomplish to complete the project?  How long will each step take?  This step will help us gain clarity in the amount of time it will take us to finish the project.

Do This:

• Sit down with some paper or in front of your computer and brainstorm the steps it will take to accomplish your project.
  • Write out each step.
• Go through each of the steps you detailed above and identify how long you believe it will take you to complete.
  • Example:  Step 1 will take me 2 hours of work.  Step 2 will take me 1 hour of work, etc.

Step 3: Gain clarity on how much time you have from now until the deadline

The next step is to gain clarity on how much time you have from today, in this moment, to the tentative deadline you set. This will help us make sure that we set a deadline that is realistic, yet challenging.

Do This:

• Go through and identify events, activities, work, meetings, and obligations you already have in your calendar.
• Now go through and identify how much free time you have in your schedule.
• Ask yourself:  “How much of this free time can I or am I willing to commit to finishing this project?”

Step 4: Create the final deadline

This is the last and final step.  We are going to take all of the information from the previous 3 steps and put it all together to come up with a deadline that will challenge us to complete our project.

Do This:

• On a piece of paper: Write out the tentative date.
• Next, write down the amount of hours it will take to execute.
• Next, write down the amount of hours you have committed to execute.
• Take the time it will take to execute and the time you have committed and compare the two.
  • Do you have enough time from now until the deadline to complete the project?
    • If yes, great.  Can you move the project forward and complete it sooner?
    • If no, lets work on this.   Can you remove any distractions or actions towards non priorities to free up space?  If no, do you need to extend out the deadline to a later date?
• Once you have gained clarity on the time commitment, create a new deadline or confirm the tentative deadline.
• Build necessity:  Spend 5 minutes brainstorming and writing down on paper why this deadline is important.  Why do you need to complete the project by this deadline?  What will be impacted by you finishing this project by this deadline?
• Plan: The last step is to go through your planner and block time to execute!

Follow this process and watch how productive, clear, and efficient you become.

Watch the video explaining this process:

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtX1RAuLqEo[/embedyt]