The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Draw a sharp line

There was prob­a­bly a good rea­son why the per­son who coined the expres­sion ​”dead­line” used the metaphor ​”line” instead of ​”sur­face”. A line is thin, spe­cif­ic in its nature and dis­tinct­ly defines a clear ​”before” and ​”after”.

A sur­face, on the oth­er hand, is com­prised of a lot of ​”dur­ing”. It is, there­fore, in my opin­ion, a bit unfor­tu­nate that we use the terms ​”due date” and ​”end date” since they are so much more ambigu­ous in the time­frame they define and thus make it hard to know when the actu­al point at which the dead­line is con­sid­ered due, is.

We might have tried to rem­e­dy the sit­u­a­tion by using the term ​”break­ing point” where we do not even refer to a line, but a sin­gle dot. But, we will do bet­ter if we just set more spe­cif­ic deadlines.

Eight hours to go or right now?

At a dis­tance, say two months ahead of the due date, a date feels like a very spe­cif­ic point in time and like a clear divid­ing line. It is either before or after the 12^th of March. But, on the morn­ing of March 12, the day stretch­es out before you. Both 8 am and 4 pm are part of the 12^th of March but are sep­a­rat­ed by almost eight hours of work — lots of hours dur­ing which you could get a lot of work done on the task which is due. It can be the actu­al eight hours that deter­mine if you meet your dead­line or not.

I, there­fore, sug­gest you assign times to your dead­lines and not only dates — not always (not even I will do that), but more often than you are doing at the moment (if you are not doing this already, that is).

But, is it not a lit­tle bit sil­ly or even over the top to deter­mine the exact time down to the very minute when some­thing should be done, so far ahead? Well, if you are able to deter­mine that you will get a hair­cut at 2 pm three weeks from now, why would you not decide to deliv­er a cer­tain report at 10 am on Fri­day at the latest?

Do this

Dur­ing the next few weeks, try set­ting your dead­lines in this more spe­cif­ic man­ner, mean­ing, with both a date and time.

Notice if it makes any dif­fer­ence to if and how the actu­al dead­line is met.

Does it feel good know­ing you have all the way until 3 pm to fin­ish or does it not make any real dif­fer­ence to how well you fin­ish your tasks and meet your deadlines?

If it did offer an improve­ment (as it has for me), make a habit out of set­ting spe­cif­ic dead­lines from now on.

Eas­i­er to plan, hard­er to postpone

If you make your dead­lines more spe­cif­ic and use the exact time by which tasks need to be com­plet­ed, it will become eas­i­er to plan your days since the points in time you need to relate and plan accord­ing to are clear beyond any doubt. As long as the task at hand does not take days to com­plete, this will make a big dif­fer­ence when plan­ning how and when you will do it. Will you do it now or can you wait for a few hours with­out any harm done, and there­fore have time to do a few oth­er tasks in between and still make the deadline?

Fares, who is a read­er of this newslet­ter just like you are, got in touch and remind­ed me that the risk of you fin­ish­ing the task late is reduced as well since you tend to pri­or­i­tize tasks that need to be done at 9 am, by 10.30 am or before 1 pm, rather than ​”some­time today”. If you push the task with the ambigu­ous dead­line aside more than once, the risk increas­es that you sud­den­ly find your­self with much less time than you need to fin­ish it at the end of the day, and have to either work at top speed or stay at the office until mid­night to fin­ish it.

What’s your way?

Do you have some oth­er clever trick to set­ting effec­tive dead­lines that help you meet them with greater ease? If so, email me and share your thoughts or tips.

(Do you know these five ways to keep track of your dead­lines?)