How To Deal With Deadlines In Productive Way
I’ve always struggled with deadlines, from school, uni to work. But wafter all these years, I finally have a way of dealing with deadlines and minimize procrastination. I remember when they gave us little mini assignments in uni with a one percent that went towards the final grade. They gave us plenty of time to complete these assignments. I would pick up the assignments and spend the next week looking at it, rationalizing with myself as to why I shouldn’t worry about it for now and that I could just punch it out on the weekend. That literally never happened. I spent the four-year course just thinking about the assignment, dreaming about it and anything else, except doing it. Then I would go like a maniac the night before it’s due, fueled by adrenaline and cortisol. That’s not a good way to go through uni, work, school or your personal projects. So, after all these years, I’ve finally devised a way to achieve tasks before they are due and live a more meaningful and productive life.
- Discipline:
It sounds a little scary to talk about discipline, but it just means doing something you’re meant to do. If you know what you need to do, you just need to do them. It sounds easier said than done but hear me out. For a while, I’ve been meaning to lose a few kilos and get in shape. So with a lot of trial and error, I finally came up with a way to do what I need to do. I used to struggle with junk food and sugar. But slowly and over time, I’ve trained myself to stay away from junk food and embrace a healthy and clean way of eating. I found that if you keep it up for about three months you just keep on the path without trying. I actually like and crave the taste of vegetables and lean meat now. Also, in terms of workout regime, I tell myself that, no matter what happens, I’m gonna hit three sessions. It doesn’t have to be on certain days but for the last three months, I’ve been doing 3 x 1 hour sessions where I do a bit of weight lifting and cardio. You don’t have to do extreme PX90 style exercises either, as long as you get your body moving for an hour. Anyway, my point is, you know yourself best and what needs to be done. I’m not saying just go and do them. All I’m saying is when you have a task at hand, you have to have a go at completing it. The way I rationalize is by telling myself that my life will be better off by doing it. So, the word “discipline” doesn’t have to be this difficult that that you need to have some sort of internal struggle. For me, discipline is just doing something on daily basis. I give myself bite-sized achievable daily tasks that I can do within a reasonable amount of time.
- Work Everyday
I wake up at 4am everyday. When I wake up at that time, straight up, it gives me a sense of achievement and sets the tone for the whole day. I like spending that time on journaling, brainstorming and executing ideas that I’ve written down. I don’t have a super stringent schedule but I do give myself a set of tasks that I have to achieve everyday. So my mind is primed to do them on most days. There hasn’t been a day where something happens so that your whole day is turned upside down. These tasks are what I mentioned in point one, eating well, fitting in a workout session, writing the blog for my website etc. If you really break it down, most things are actually easy to complete. By “work everyday”, what I mean is put in consistent effort that is easy and reasonable to achieve. My goal is never the result, it’s always to keep going in the right direction.
- Be Your Own Boss
The title of this point is a little misleading. What I mean by “be your own boss” means, you have to tell yourself what to do. That means you have to be your own employee. When I wake up every morning, I immediately know what needs to be done for the day so that I can get the outcome I need so that I can live my life properly. Missing the mark one or two of the list of things to do won’t be the end of the world, but if I keep failing at lot of the daily to-dos, in the long run will start to impact on my life. Like, if I keep missing the mark on eating healthily, eventually, I will gain back the weight that I lost and have less energy and stamina to do other things. That’s just a small example. Like I said above, your daily to do list doesn’t have to be some sort of soul-sucking impossible thing. I don’t have the desire to climb the Mt Everest or get down to less than ten percent. All I know is that if I can do some pull ups and keep my weight at maintenance, I know I’ve done something well for the day. That goes for writing, working on my business or anything else. I no longer think in terms of some extreme thing that is so hard that all I do is procrastinate about it. Now I give myself little baby-step path ways that once I’ve taken them everyday, I have a sense of achievement and drives me forward for the next day.
I can go on forever on this subject, but I’ll end it here. The takeaway message I want to give you guys is to, just keep going with whatever it is that you’re pursuing by giving yourself little to-do lists that you can achieve with a bit of effort. I’m still on this journey so I can’t say any more than that for now. I’ll talk some more about what’s on my mind tomorrow.
Thanks for reading 😊