(Newswire.net — June 3, 2020) — For entrepreneurs, teams, and B2B companies, deadlines play a critically important role in success. If you consistently meet deadlines, you stand a much better chance of earning future jobs and revenue. If you fail to meet deadlines, your inability to satisfy project requirements sends the wrong message and jeopardizes your reputation (and possibly your financial stability).
While no individual, team, or company is perfect, why is it that certain ones consistently meet deadlines time and time again? How do they seem to satisfy these requirements regardless of changing circumstances and outside noise?
Their secrets aren’t as complicated or technical as you might think. It essentially comes down to strategy, discipline, execution, and iteration.
Here’s a look at some of the specific techniques they use:
1. Ask When, Not What
Most people begin by asking what it is they want/need to achieve. Then they slap on a deadline and get to work. But this might not be the best approach. It’s better to say this is when we want to achieve something, now let’s figure out what we can fit into the timeframe.
“Think of it this way: You can build a mobile app in 12 months, or you can build a mobile app in two months,” Monday.com explains. “And it’s true that they won’t be the same mobile app. But, if you want to manage time, that’s the first thing you need to decide on. Do I have 12 months to build a mobile app, or do I need a mobile app in two months.”
2. Plan in Reverse
One of the best strategies is to work in reverse. Start with the day you want to have the project finished and then work backward to establish smaller deadlines and checkpoints for each of the preceding steps. By shifting your vantage point, you force yourself to compress the action steps so that you’re able to accomplish the end goal on time.
3. Prioritize Individual Tasks
All tasks must be completed in order to meet your deadline, but not all tasks are created equal. Make it easier to wrap your brain around which tasks are most important by developing a prioritization system. Don’t get too complicated with it, though. A simple 1-5 numbering system or color-coded tagging system (red for urgent, orange for semi-urgent, yellow for necessary, and green for when time allows) should suffice.
4. Front-Load Your Days and Weeks
If you’re being realistic with yourself, you know that you won’t complete every task for the day or week. There’s only so much time in your schedule and there’s always going to be some overflow. The key is to take your high priority tasks and front-load your days and weeks with them.
By front-loading your days, you ensure you complete the most critical tasks first and then leave room for the “when time allows” tasks if there’s space at the end of the day. The same goes for the week. Motivation, energy, and focus will be higher on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays. As the weekend approaches, your team is more likely to grow tired and lose focus. (Saving important tasks for last would compromise quality and timeliness.)
5. Use the Right Software and Tools
Don’t feel as if you have to do everything on your own. We live in a business world where there are hundreds of apps, software, tools, extensions, and plugins designed to amplify productivity and efficiency. Use them to your advantage!
The biggest challenge is identifying the right tools and blocking out the rest of the noise. A good project management software solution should serve as the backbone of your tech stack. From there, you might add some email organization tools, time tracking solutions, etc.
6. Stop Planning and Start Doing
Every successful person spends time planning, but as they say, too much of a good thing is a bad thing. If you’re spending all of your time carefully planning out your project, you’re not spending any time actually executing.
It feels good to plan. It’s a low-risk, high-reward activity. You feel like you’re making progress without actually having to dig in and do the hard work. But in reality, all of your planning is a distraction to the real thing.
Once you feel like you have enough of a plan in place to start, get moving! You can always add steps, modify the current approach, and pivot on the fly. Just start.
Evaluate and Iterate
No system is perfect or bulletproof. Over time, you’ll find it important to evaluate your processes and results so that you know what does and doesn’t work. From there, you can iterate and improve with the goal of refining your system so that it evolves along with your improving skills and growing experience.