Deadlines

How do you feel about deadlines? Do you feel anxious about them or just embrace the feeling of accomplishing the task within a stipulated time frame? Do deadlines make you productive or break your confidence? In this blog post, I will share my viewpoints on deadlines; what they mean to me, and how they have affected me.

            Deadlines are nothing but some timelines to achieve various goals. They can be regarded as the time frames allotted to accomplish some goals or tasks. One can have a common deadline for various goals or different deadlines for different goals. It depends on personal preferences. These deadlines can be set by himself or through an external agent. As someone believing in the power of habits, I try to maintain consistency in some tasks like meditating 10-15 minutes a day, exercising for 10-15 minutes, spending 15-30 minutes learning German on Duolingo, brushing my teeth twice, singing for at least 5 minutes, reading at least 10 pages of a book, etc. I believe in the immense power of compounding and the joy of doing simple tasks, no matter how mundane they might seem, at times. I haven’t tried to investigate or quantify the effect of such activities. All I know is that I get benefits by doing them.

            Let’s talk about tasks that require a conscious effort to complete them. For example, writing a blog post, recording, or posting a music video on social media requires prior planning and more effort. In such tasks, I feel more productive when there’s a deadline because I don’t feel distracted and get more things done in time. For example, I completed #BlogChatterA2Z 2023 challenge beyond my belief with a very hectic schedule, and the satisfaction that I received from completing it, is simply inexplicable. This deadline to complete #BlogChatterA2Z 2023 challenge was external as it was decided by the BlogChatter Team. For completing personal tasks within some deadlines, I use the Pomofocus app to set the Pomodoro timer to improve focus on the task at hand.

             So, do my arguments imply that we should design deadlines for difficult tasks/goals in our lives? Absolutely, Not! There are some goals, or you can say wishes, for example, marriage, buying property or a car, etc., which are uncertain and affect your life. I would consider them as life decisions that should not be taken under the pressure of any deadline because life surprises you with its happenings that are beyond your control, but if you’re very fond of setting deadlines, you too can set some tentative flexible deadlines for such life decisions. Then you have to be prepared to make any modifications in your deadline, in case life throws a curveball.

            Deadlines are acceptable if they improve your productivity. They should not be taken seriously if they bring any kind of mental pressure or stress, thereby hampering your productivity. They should never be synonymous with dead ends.

All Rights Reserved!

Swati Sarangi

05.04.2024

            P.S: This post is a part of #BlogChatterA2Z 2024Challenge for Alphabet ‘D’.