Wednesday, May 29, 2019

How to Meet Your Deadlines :: Process Essays

How to Meet Your DeadlinesIts a gorgeous fall day and my mind is drifting like a dinghy on the lake. But Im inside my house watching the clock tick away, hoping to pull together this essay before the deadline arrives. If youre like me, deadlines drive you crazy, barely they also keep you driven. Chances are, youve spent countless nights awake, fretting over an upcoming deadline, even ones that are easy to meet. The Pressure CookerSo how can you handle the pressure -- tangible and imagined -- of deadlines? And what should you do if it looks like youre going to miss one? Here are a few tips on handling the dreaded D-word.Always meet your deadlines. Theres plainly no excuse, short of calamity not to. As Cameron Foote writes in The Business Side of Creativity Youre very raison detre is to do for others what they cannot or will not do for themselves. When you accept an assignment, the client expects you to be competent, professional, and most of all a fanatic about meeting his or her d eadlines.Treat deadlines with the respect they deserve. Woody Allen once said, fourscore percent of life is just showing up. Youll be amazed and how much(prenominal) return business you can earn simply by being on time. Negotiate longer lead times. Deadlines are like money, they arent easily renegotiated. Even if you think you can meet the proposed deadline with exact problem, its best to win yourself a little unornamented time during the initial negotiation.Extra time acts as insurance should a work or personal emergency arise or if the rent out becomes inexplicably complex. The slack can also come in handy if you need to accommodate a rush job, particularly one with extra dollars attached. Ask for an extra day or week or month, whatever is appropriate to the work you do and the scope of the project. Whenever you start talking to a client about a deadline, think about your kids, significant other, or be hit the sackd hobby, and silently ask yourself Is this deadline going to p revent me from spending time with the people or activities I love? If nothing more, this ploy gives you the incentive to ask for that extra week or two. Break up chores into manageable pieces. Perhaps the problem is not the deadline, so much as the sheer size of a project you face. One way to battle this daunting specter is by creating a Gantt chart to break the project into smaller chunks.

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