With a deadline to meet how you are going to manage without pulling out your hair – here some tips to help
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
With a deadline and the pressure to get it met comes a feeling of being alive.
The deadline challenge is what gives us humans the chance to grow. There are always those last minute doubts that happen say a week away when the mountain of impossibility looms and the project just cant be seen to be a viable reality.
Wikipedia mentions an interesting comment on the origins of the word deadline:
The term deadline originated from prison camps during war, and referred to a physical line or boundary. Guards would shoot any prisoner who crossed the deadline. The “deadline” in such prison camps as Confederate Prison Camp Andersonville or Union Prison Camp Douglas Chicago during the Civil War was “Inside (the wall), about 19 feet from the wall,” which prisoners were forbidden to cross. The “deadline” was intended to prevent prisoners from climbing over the stockade or from tunnelling under it. The term was later adapted in its use to time lines, perhaps to show the seriousness of an end date in a timeline by referring to it as a “deadline.”
No matter what the reasons though at this point comes the hard fact that whatever luck is going bad, or the access to the necessary is lacking or the machine breaks down, the excuses do not and never can have validity. in the end we are responsible and no one else.
Without a deadline the job would probably never get done. A deadline gives you the chance to focus and realise what has to be achieved in the time allotted. Otherwise you may never get round to ever finishing it. If you dont make it you still have the chance to revise it and make it better but if the deadline is not met it could well be that that idea or initiated work becomes lost in the debris of “what could have been.”
Some years ago I remember I had a new performance to premier in Frankfurt at a friend’s theatre club called SINKKASTEN: the show was not ready and I begged him the night before to play my old show and postpone the new one till another date. I felt I could not make the deadline. Detlef Cristoph shook his head and said simply “no Johnny – you do the new show” The next night I was forced to improvise through the show to reach the end without making a complete idiot of myself. And you know what ? – the show – even with the mistakes was a hit.
So some tips
1.) GIVE YOURSELF DEADLINES They will push your limits and get you out of that comfort zone.
2.) BETTER TO FAIL THAN NEVER HAVE TRIED….(depending how you ego can take failure of course)
2.) WHATEVER THE OUTCOME I AM RESPONSIBLE ( it doesnt matter what things go wrong – whoever has the name on the project is the one who gets the glory or the embaressment. The more you fail, the more you grow, the more you grow them more you sow.
3.) DON’T GIVE UP – WHO CARES IF YOU SCREW UP? ( Life is too short to look back and say “I wish I had….”)
4.) BE STEADFAST IN YOUR DECISIONS AND DELIVER ( live life to honour the commitments you make)
5.) LIKE YOURSELF ….. whatever the result.
At empower network there are certain rules which are very interesting – one of the main ones is NO COMPLAINING – whatever what happens to you is only your thing and no one else. The unconscious attracts whatever it is giving out so it is REALLY important to clear the cluttered and negative aspects of the mind and focus well.