Deadlines can be murder

Posted by Offer Tsuriel on November 5, 2009

A kindly old editor once explained to me the facts of life in journalism: “Deadlines are simple. Cross the line, and you’re dead.”
Probably not an original thought, and he had a gleam in his eye when he said it, but I took it to heart. Through two decades in the news business, I rarely missed a deadline. In fact, I usually delivered my stories early. It left more time to argue with the editors.
Deadlines are more extreme in the newspaper business, but every industry has them. That’s why you see people using laptop computers at the beach. It’s why the businessman with the car phone melded to his ear nearly mowed you down in traffic this morning. And it’s one reason ulcer medications sell so well (parenting being the other reason).
When you have no boss looming over your desk, deadlines are largely self-imposed. Granted, clients make demands and there are only so many hours in each day. But when you work at home, your schedule is your own. If you need to work all night to meet a deadline, so be it. You can catch up on your sleep when you’re done. The trick is to pace yourself, so you don’t pull too many all-nighters.
 
 
Keep busy every day, plan ahead, and make a schedule. Stay on top of the work before it gets on top of you.
Okay, you can stop laughing now. No, really. Stop it.
Here’s how to formulate your schedule: divide your work in a given week by the number of days you actually can work on it. Set daily goals. Meet each goal, and-voila!-you’ve met the deadline.
Stop that chortling. You think I can’t hear that?
So the secret is in the planning. Remember that Monday is grocery day, Wednesday is laundry, and Friday is that dental appointment. Write it all down so you don’t forget. Then chart the available hours that remain.
Enough with the snickering. I’m trying to give you good advice here.
Did you leave room for all this weekly planning? Getting organized takes time. And you’ll need to regularly evaluate your plan to make sure it’s working. If things go wrong, you can reconfigure your schedule. If it means doubling up your work hours for a day or two to still hit that deadline, it’ll be worth it, won’t it? A happy client is a client for keeps. And an unhappy client won’t care that you were called away by an equally unhappy schoolteacher who wanted to discuss little Johnny’s spitball habit.
There you go again. All right, forget it. I don’t have time for this anyway. I’ve got a project to complete. And if it’s not finished on time, I’m dead.