How to Set Deadlines for Yourself that Really Work
Rewards are fun — but the fear of pain is what keeps you focused
I have a freelance writing contract that requires me to deliver a newsletter of around 2,000 words to my client on the second Wednesday of every new calendar quarter. It’s a hard deadline; if I don’t deliver the newsletter, the company can’t bill their clients, which blows up their quarterly operations calendar and gets a lot of people pissed off. At me.
Some quarters, the work on this newsletter flows easily for me and I’m done well before the deadline. Other quarters, I struggle for ideas and direction; when that happens, I invariably procrastinate and wait until the last minute.
But there comes a point when I know I simply have no other choice — I have to put aside everything else, block out every distraction and bust my ass to get the newsletter finished on time. If I don’t, revenue will be lost, people will be mad, and I’ll lose my contract.
The interesting thing about this gig is how instructive it is to me on the importance of deadlines. In particular, deadlines we set ourselves for goals we want to attain.
Deadlines come naturally in a corporate setting. Our higher-ups assign us a project, and we have to deliver it by a specified date. If we…
