3 Ways To Structure And Keep To Your Deadlines
by Taiyab
Filed under Freelance Advice, Time Management
I mentioned in my last post that I was experiencing some kind of procrastination problem; a very weird problem indeed. I realized though that one way to get on top of your work and never miss a deadline is simple, I call it ‘Shadow Deadlines’ (more on them later). I also realized that there are small steps you can take in order to increase your chances of hitting your deadline drastically, and keeping yourself moving in terms of working toward that deadline…
#1 ‘Shadow Deadlines’
‘Shadow Deadlines’ are deadlines set by yourself which you set the project completion to be on. It’s almost like a personal target, but should be treated as the actual project deadline. Usually your ‘Shadow Deadline’ should be around 1-2 weeks (or maybe a couple days, depends on the type of project) previous to the deadline agreed upon with the client. This means that you’ll actually be finishing up the project way in advance just incase you get the odd problem. The best part is, you could provide your work earlier than the deadline, and I’m sure your client would be extremely pleased.
To be honest with you, it’s an extremely simple way of hitting your deadline, all the time, and even getting a little bonus of out it by being able to hit a deadline before it’s due – a very new concept to myself actually.
#2 Stone It All The Way – Milestones
Milestones are a great way to keep yourself on your target deadline. It’s true that breaking up any task into smaller chunks helps your think that your project is a lot smaller/easier to handle. You should apply this to your deadlines also. Set decent milestones in each process of the project.
For example, if you need to create a full-blown ecommerce website then you would apply the following logic:
- Milestone 1: Design – Deadline: 26th October
- Milestone 2: xHTML/CSS Coding – Deadline: 4th November
- Milestone 3: Integration into e-commerce script – Deadline: 10th November
Each milestone would have a set deadline as shown above. Maybe you could even apply a ‘Shadow Deadline’ to each section to make sure it’s all done on time.
Once you achieve your milestone, induce a feeling of accomplishment within yourself, and gladly tick/cross that section out on your written/digital document which states your milestones. It’s always good to document information like this as it’ll help when clearing things up with your client, and it will help psychologically by ‘getting your head into the project’.
#3 Short Bursts
Ok, number 3 is more of a ‘work ettique’ type thing, but I’m going to mention it anyway. When working on a project, I personally find it more effective to work in short, concentrated bursts rather than drawn out, no-so-effective periods of time. I find using a timer which is attached to my FreshBooks account also keeps me in check, and prevents me from going off and getting lost in something else rather than working on the project at hand.
My working bursts tend to be about an hour longer, sometimes less than that. I find that about after an hour my concentration levels decrease dramatically so I don’t see a need to proceed more than that. Best thing to do is go take a break for about 10-20 minutes, and then proceed with another burst of work.
So there you have it, my 3 Ways to Structure and Keep to Your Deadlines.
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Hmm. Setting “Shadow deadlines” and Milestones may not work. Simply because you know that the last and final deadline is not 100% real, you may procrastinate even more by moving the deadlines previously set forward.
You have:
Milestone 1: Design – Deadline: 26th October
Milestone 2: xHTML/CSS Coding – Deadline: 4th November
Milestone 3: Integration into e-commerce script – Deadline: 10th November
Which may easily become:
Milestone 1: Design – Deadline: 28th October
Milestone 2: xHTML/CSS Coding – Deadline: 6th November
Milestone 3: Integration into e-commerce script – Deadline: 12th November
I have been using deadlines in my calendar which is synced between macs and phone back and forth, and when I am not in the mood to work for my company, I tend to put one more day to each major deadline. In fact, it is just a drag and drop.
However, I do tend to be more productive when I know the real deadline comes closer. That stresses me a bit and procrastination is gone.
Overall, I think this procrastination in freelancers and small business owners is caused by the temporary lack of huge amounts of work. When there’s little work to do, it is easy to postpone it.
Well argued point Bogdan, I understand what you’re saying. Your last point of temporarily lack of huge amounts of work is probably true to the main bunch of freelancers but I would still there’s variation in this also. I tend to be able to work much faster when I only have one project on the go simple because I can focus all my energies into that. There’s no stress involved because you can’t really be late with a deadline when you only have one client.
There are obvious issues with this though, such as not being able to earn enough from one client at a time.
That idea on the drag and drop calendar sounds very good, maybe you could guest post here about it in more depth?
I tend not to like to be forced into action as the deadline comes closer as you mentioned; yes, very weird I know.
Thanks for the great comment overall. I’ll be emailing you with regards to the guest post.
The drag and drop feature is “out of the box” so to speak, in Mac OS X’s calendar application. I have not used any other such applications, so do not know how other perform.
The basic idea is that calendar applications now allow changing data very quickly, without typing anything. That causes this issue. If you weren’t able to update that fast and postpone some small deadlines, maybe you would just spend 5 minutes and get them done.
I think the shadow deadline concept has merit. Yes, the date provided to the client may be different but it comes down to discipline in using this internal date as a target. As with a lot of things, a few weeks of sticking to it can lead to internalizing it.
Ultimately, I can see where it leads to satisfied customer…and really, isn’t that what it’s all about? In this challenging economy, keeping current clients and selling them more is a very efficient way of keeping cashflow coming in. And the return on investment for a satisfied customer yields great dividends.
Great ideas, I just spent 7 hours straight on one website, to find out its screwed in ie6 and i dont even want to look at the dumb thing anymore (it was a pain to get it working in ie7 already)
Best of the best