10 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Wait Until Your Deadline
Do you leave everything until the last minute and wait until the deadline looms to start your big project? Well, it’s doing you more harm than good says Lucy Benton and she gives you 10 reasons why in this article.
Have you noticed that nobody takes deadlines seriously anymore? Even though they are critically important in business, many people have been in the habit of failing to keep their promises to meet deadlines.
While there are many reasonable explanations for why someone would miss a deadline, many reasons are totally and completely unreasonable. For example, many people tend to drift endlessly from week and week, hoping they would complete their work in tight timeframes.
As the result, they often wait until late to complete their projects without an obvious reason.
If this sounds familiar, check out the following ten excellent reasons why you shouldn’t wait until a deadline is upon you.
Reason #1: Prevent Unnecessary Stress
This is an obvious one. Yes, stress can be a powerful motivator and an essential to survival. However, if your body experiences stress regularly, the mechanism of stress undermines your mental and physical health.
For example, here are short-term consequences of stress, as described by the American Institute of Stress:
- Fatigue
- Headache
- Dizziness
- Appetite changes
- Lack of energy
- Anger or irritability
- Change in sex drive
- Muscle tension.
These symptoms obviously don’t sound like something you should experience, agree?
Reason #2: Prevent a Potential Blow to Your Career
A missed deadline often means a missed opportunity and an impact on your career. Your work ethic is a powerful predictor of career success, so if you regularly miss deadlines or deliver work at the last minute, you could potentially undermine your image as a reliable worker.
Your future clients obviously won’t appreciate you missing deadlines, so keep your reputation intact by keeping your promises.
Reason #3: Improve Quality of Your Work
You want to concentrate on delivering good work, right? For that, you don’t need interruptions such as angry calls from a client asking when their project will be completed. If you leave all the work until late, chances are that you won’t be able to perform as well as you could because you would be faced with stress and interruptions.
As the result, it’s quite possible that you won’t be satisfied with the work you delivered. The most important thing is that this could easily be prevented by following the schedule and honoring deadlines.
Reason #4: Resolve Unexpected Issues Quicker
Very often, projects don’t go as smoothly as you plan and issues emerge. If you don’t have sufficient time to deal with them, chances are that you’ll be soon contacting the customer and asking them for an extension.
On the other hand, if you plan everything ahead and respect deadlines, you’ll have a much better chance to resolve an unexpected issue.
Reason #5: Prevent Money Loss
In many cases, missed deadlines cost a lot of money, especially if the project is quite big. Often, customers even charge penalties for a failure to deliver work within an agreed timeframe, so you could also face a financial loss or work extra for free because of that.
Reason #6: Enhance Staff Morale
If your team has been missing deadlines, chances are high that they’re quite demotivated and even angry. Remember: meeting deadlines goes a long way in increasing employee morale because they’ll feel well about delivering great work and getting praised by the customer.
Reason #7: You’ll find Yourself with More Time
If you deliver a project ahead of time, you can start working on the next one early or have a break to free up your mind. As the result, you’ll have more free time than you possibly could have imagined.
Reason #8: You’ll Motivate Yourself
Achieving something and being praised by a customer sure feels great, and it could do wonders for your motivation. On the other hand, facing stressful evenings and even nights doing everything you can to complete a project clearly doesn’t have the same effect.
Reason #9: You’ll Improve Your Time Management Skills
If you’re in the habit of waiting until deadlines, chances are that your time management skills aren’t as great as they can be. Since these skills are tremendously important in business, improving them to make sure that you meet all deadlines makes a lot of sense.
Reason #10: You’ll Improve Your Planning Skills
It’s a known fact that the Sydney Opera House was originally planned to complete in 1963 for a total budget of $7 million. However, it opened doors to visitors ten years after the deadline, in 1973, with a final price tag of more than $100 million.
Don’t become a victim of the planning fallacy that has you underestimating the deadlines and the amount of work involved. It would be much better to treat your projects seriously, plan everything at the beginning and stick to a schedule.
Tools for helping you Meet Deadlines
- A-Writer. If the project you’re struggling with involves writing and proofreading, chances are you could use a professional advice, which is exactly what this tool provides.
- Wunderlist. An excellent to-do list app that can help you with achieving a wide range of tasks, organizing your time, and getting reminders when you need.
- College Paper. Remember the sleepless marathon you did to submit a large business research paper, business report, or a whitepaper? This tool is designed specifically to increase the efficiency of your writing and editing process.
- Motivation Test. Want to know what motivates you so you can use it to accomplish everything in time? Feel free to take this test and find out.
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