Ever notice how you manage to get every important thing done before you have to leave on a vacation? Having that departure date as a deadline drives you to suddenly prioritize and execute the right activities to do. As we all return to “normal,” there are many things to do to get business revved up for future growth (market, staff up, modify/change products, increase sales, etc.). Setting clear deadlines for each of those activities will help ensure they get done. Why is that?
It’s Human Nature
Christopher Fox is the author of “The Deadline Effect: How to work like it’s the last minute – before the last minute” and has explored this topic in detail. His bottom-line finding: Samuel Johnson’s conclusion that deadlines concentrate the mind wonderfully. [What Johnson actually said: “Depend upon it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”]
In a recent New York Times article, Cox describes several experiments to prove his point. Here are two.
- Two groups of students were offered $5 to fill out a long questionnaire. The first group had five days to do it and the second group had no deadline. The results: 60 percent of the students with a deadline returned the questionnaire
and got their $5. Only 25 percent of those with no deadline finished the task. - Fox also found many examples to show that not only do deadlines themselves lead to better performance, but that tighter deadlines do the same as well. He cites a U.S. census worker who discovered that if you took seven days off the window in which people had to reply to the postal census survey, more people turned it in.
“As Soon as I Can” is Not a Deadline
Nor are “when I have some free time” or “I’ll get to that” or “Next week” (which never comes). The formula for successful accomplishment is to
- Write out all the important challenges and targets ahead of you
- Set realistic and specific deadlines for each of the items on that list
- Break down the specific activities (call, write, research, etc.) needed to achieve each of those targets
- Schedule those action items on your calendar and, as much as possible, hold to that schedule (deadlines)
- Check your progress periodically vs. that schedule (daily, weekly, monthly) and modify where necessary
Keeping the big picture in front of you and letting it drive your activities –- with those deadlines — is the way successful people continully achieve their goals.
Anne Miller
Words Matter – Make What You Say Pay!
P.S. Photo by Emma Matthews Digital Content Production on Unsplash
If one of your goals us to sharpen your sales skills or presentation messaging, contact me — today — for a free 15 minute consult at amiller@annemiller.com or call 212 876 1875.
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