Managing deadlines can be as mentally and emotionally draining as it is physically exhausting. For the longest time I blamed myself for this “deadline overload”, until fairly recently when I simply took a personal deep dive to assess why I got here in the first place.
Not brushing off my responsibility in this happening, don’t get me wrong I know I am 100% responsible, but I just started objectively thinking about it trying to understand how it happened and what I can do to find a way out.
At first I needed to identify when exactly this started, especially because all throughout my adult life I was never a stranger to deadlines or long to-do lists. What’s new this time is that at some point my attitude towards them shifted. At some point my line between what is important and what is a priority blurred.
First realization: The difference between ‘important’ and ‘priority’?
Important is subjective and personal, and not all priorities are necessarily important to you. This is probably a big part of why deadline overload happens, because when you think about it the list of deadlines and to-do’s doesn’t grow to unmanageable levels from complacency or laziness. On the contrary, my days just got busier and busier and it seemed like I didn’t have enough time to do anything. I was certainly never “not doing anything”.
The only thing I can point towards is that I was always doing something that was not a priority for me, and that made it so that I would immediately get distracted or sidetracked at every possible opportunity.
So this meant that I needed to find a way to treat what I deem important as a priority. There will definitely be some tasks that aren’t, and for those I decided that it is crucial that everyone around me (who are expecting these deliverables) are aligned on this, or at the very least aware that this is happening, and that it is not at the top of my list.
Just by having this realization and improving communication with my team and my clients, a huge amount of the pressure I was dealing with got released. Making sure we all operate under the same shared list of priorities, and the same assumptions, is actually 80% of the way there.
Second realization: “Just because I once was, doesn’t mean I still am.”
Next I needed to look internally and organize my own self and put my life in order. The older I get with experience, and the more responsibilities fall in my care, the clearer and more evident this realization becomes.
I used to be great at maintaining a mental to-do list for everything, but that doesn’t mean I can do that now. Eventually the list got so big and diverse that I needed to start writing down notes and to-do items. It is definitely a hassle I avoided all my life, being just another thing that I need to do, but something about physically jotting down tasks that need doing and seeing the words written in front of me helps keep me grounded, and at some level, accountable.
My iPad’s Notes and Reminders apps are lifesavers here, because they sync quite well with my phone in a way that makes them always present in front of me every time I get distracted or start some other task throughout the day. I set up my devices to show me these lists and open to-do items as widgets on my lock and home screens during my work hours or focus times.
Third realization: The only way to get things done is by getting them done.
Of course notes are not a magical solution to get through to-dos and meet all the deadlines. What really helped me is that I start the day with looking at my list of reminders and rearranging them in order of what I think their priorities for the day are, understanding that something that is high on the list today doesn’t necessary mean it will be that every day. Starting a day with a couple minutes of reflection and organization sets the tone for how it is going to go. Something about the simple act of dragging items around and rearranging their order with my finger seems to add an innate sense of urgency and hacks my brain in a way that makes me tend to forget important deadlines and to-dos significantly less. Relying on my past abilities of mentally changing the order of priorities to keep functioning with my growing list of responsibilities is simply untenable, and unreliable. I can’t explain it, but actually seeing a task jump to the top of the queue as a result of my own finger dragging it gives it an extra sense of importance.
Fourth realization: it is absolutely healthy to say no.
In the past I had this fallacy that by saying “no” I am announcing to the world that I am rejecting this task entirely, when in fact it only means that I am managing my time effectively, and that I am only using my rejection as a tool to communicate my boundaries and my priorities at the moment.
This one took me some time to get comfortable with. But learning to accept the limitations of my own mental bandwidth and surrender to the fact that there is only so much I can prioritize increased the overall efficiency and productivity of everything I spend time on. By actually voicing my objections whenever a task is brought up (by my clients or even from my team members) that needs dedicated focus, it puts in perspective what is important to focus on now. Once I got comfortable with saying no, my overall satisfaction with the tasks that I do complete actually increased.
TL;DR: Some realizations helped me overcome some of the deadline overload that has been stressing me out:
- Understanding the difference between what is important to me, and what is a priority is key.
- Just because I once could, doesn’t mean I still can (or should).
- The only way to get things done is by getting them done.
- Saying no some times is incredibly healthy.