Rethinking Deadlines

Photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

The thing about deadlines is that, if we’re conscientious, we’ll actually work to them.

Which, in general, is a good thing because deadlines ensure that we prioritize our tasks, allocate the needed resources (usually) and get things done with intent.

At the same time, deadlines - if not correctly set - can give us a false sense of security. If the allotted time is “more than enough”, we’ll get comfortable; after all, the timeline looks workable and if we build out the right workplan, we’ll easily get “there”.

And therein lies the problem. 

If you give yourself 6 months to get something done, guess what? You’ll take the full 6 months to get it done. 

You have no incentive to rethink, to push yourself, to revamp conventional approaches. Because there’s no anxiety, no discomfort, nothing pushing you (in a positive way). 

But if you make it a stretch target - if you give yourself 90 days, for example, then that’s much more imminent. Then you’ll look at your end goal, your options, and consider how you might transform your approach to achieve an aggressive timeline. 

Because scarcity is, more often than not, the driver of innovation. We work with what we have and if we don’t have much, we’ll innovate to get us to our end goal. 

This is the number one rule of the bootstrapper and applies to all walks of life. It’s easy to take it easy, but that rarely pays off when you need to get to somewhere meaningful.