Ep 154: Navigating deadlines

After a couple of episodes where we looked at setting and achieving goals, and the power of habits, we shift our focus slightly to examine deadlines.

These can either feel like motivating targets to hit, or a dreaded date in our calendar. Whether it’s a deadline we’ve been given by someone at work, or a deadline we’ve imposed on ourselves, the way we think about it – and the work we actually do to achieve it – makes all the difference.

Setting a deadline establishes a target – but it won’t be reached by itself. And sometimes, the act of identifying a future date for our work can represent a form of procrastination. We can improve how we work with deadlines by moving away from the automatic ‘yes’ when asked by others, and ensuring we have blocked out time in our schedules to do the necessary work. It’s also helpful to do a weekly review, so we can check for impending deadlines and ensure we’re not setting ourselves up for a bottleneck of deadlines and workload that seemed so manageable a few weeks before.

How do you make deadlines work for you? Let us know by emailing ‘podcast at worklifepsych dot com’ or join the conversation online on our community – it’s free to join. Simply visit https://www.worklifepsych.club today!

Thanks for listening!

And if watching is more your thing, don’t forget you can find our latest podcast episodes over on YouTube as well. This episode can be found at https://youtu.be/vLwH_tMdE20

Resources for this episode

Ep 152: The dark side of goals – https://www.worklifepsych.com/podcast/152/ 

Ep 153: Why can’t I stick to my habits? https://www.worklifepsych.com/podcast/153/

Ep 141: The stories you tell yourself when you procrastinate – https://www.worklifepsych.com/podcast/141/