Why Deadlines are important at Workplace for Better Time Management

Everyone these days is chasing productivity. Whether at work or at home, deadline management tool tried to use time efficiently and do something productive. But when we have so much on our plate, getting everything done and being productive becomes a challenge.

How to do it then?

Time management is one of the ways you can accomplish many things in the finite time that we all have. To accomplish time management, setting deadlines has the most important role to play. Prioritizing tasks and setting deadlines will help you to stay focused and on track; and will let you have good control over your workload.

Let’s understand why setting deadlines is essential in time management

1. 24 hours- that’s all you have

You don’t have forever, you only have 24 hours in a day where you have to work, eat, sleep, exercise, manage your business and your family. This limited time that we all have makes setting deadlines very important for time management.

Not tracking time will lead you to miss out on a lot of essential things and simultaneously lead to a pile of tasks. You will be lenient believing that you have time and that you will finish it later when in fact, you will only be losing time. Not setting deadlines and then not completing tasks causes stress and anxiety. Unless you set deadlines for yourself and your team, build a strategy and stick to it; you will always end up feeling that you are running out of time.

2. Deadlines keep you accountable

Defining the timeline and setting the purpose for any important thing that needs to be done, accelerates the attention towards it. Whether set by you or by your client, the deadline management tool sets the task in motion and places all the stakeholders on the same page. Deadlines create critical metrics for your actions to be deemed as a success or a failure. You become accountable for finishing or not finishing the task on time.

3. Sets momentum in the right direction

For all of us, achieving or succeeding always outweighs failure and we focus on setting strategic deadlines to meet our deadlines.  We get agitated as the deadline closes in or we become more focused and motivated. This pushes us to move in the direction of finishing our tasks. As time passes we become comfortable working with deadlines and get confident about our abilities.

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Every action takes us a little closure to achieving our goals and as we progress from one milestone to another, our goal feels more attainable. Incremental progression establishes the right pace for you to meet the deadlines.

4. Spurring creativity and innovation

For some individuals, deadline management tool fuels creativity and it becomes an opportunity to generate value and feel challenged. People driven by success, always set deadlines to pivot to excellence whether it is about delivering work to clients on time or exceeding the expectations of work.

Motivated people harness their creativity and skills to streamline their workflow and re-engineer their resources to finish work faster and with excellent quality. Successful entrepreneurs and professionals learn to leverage deadlines as a strategic advantage.

5. Establishes priorities

Deadlines impact your and everyone else’s time. Deadlines force you to organize work based on priority. This helps you to work on objectives and tasks that take you closer to your most meaningful goals. It forces you to focus on the key milestones first.

Many of us keep sifting through emails, social media, or getting roped in non-urgent, non-important responsibilities leaving us with no time to focus on the important task at hand. As a result, we deliver poor results and sometimes even fail to deliver what was promised.

If we don’t manage time and set priorities for things and tasks that are important, we are likely to fail in achieving our goals and be a mediocre performer

How to set deadlines that work for you?

While deadlines are meant to accelerate your progress towards achieving the goals, some deadline management tool hold you back from achieving goals and good outcomes. In fact, unreasonable deadlines coupled with poor time management and procrastination contribute to failure as much as not setting deadlines and not managing time does. To ensure that you set achievable deadlines and they help you to deliver positive results, consider the following:

– Adopt the SMART framework. SMART means Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound approach to set strategic goals. Ensure that your deadlines are attainable, are specific and are measurable. Ensure the same for your team members as well, so maximize the benefit and achieve the overall goal faster.

– Set reasonable deadlines by engaging everyone and taking their feedback. Include your team on how to schedule the best framework for the project or the task.

– Use the right software that makes tracking and reporting easy. Tracking is one of the best ways to set deadlines and track progress. Time tracking tools not only help in achieving deadlines. It also helps you to understand the work of your team members.

– Give rewards and implement penalties for meeting or failing deadlines.

– Involve the right people to help you in setting your deadlines based on client deadlines in case you are not working with the client directly. 

Setting deadlines can seem to be a daunting task but it is an effective tool to get things done and instill discipline. When you know how much time is left, you let go of distractions and focus on the important thing that needs to be done.