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Dealing with Tight Deadlines: What’s The Rush?
Everyone wants everything yesterday. I have observed this in the business world, but in all other areas of life, too.
Shows like “American Chopper” and “Mega Builders” demonstrate this “need for speed” clearly. Contestants race against the clock to build or construct. They have ridiculously short time-frames in which to finish a project.
It never fails that these projects run into serious problems because everyone is so concerned about meeting the deadline that they forget about important details.
This happened to Jamie and me recently. A network partner requested we put together a profile of our business for a very important event with plenty of exposure. We rushed to get the project together, and we performed flawlessly under pressure (thank god).
The partner was also rushing to build his own presentation of all his network contact profiles. The result was that a few submissions (including ours) were left out of the main presentation at the event.
The client felt horrible about it, and I have no hard feelings. I understand. What I don’t get is that if you know an event is going to happen, why is there such a last-minute panic? Creating a checklist in the beginning, a to-do list next, delegating tasks and taking a half hour to create a schedule would have helped the project go more smoothly.
Personally, I can’t leave work to the last minute. That’s more stressful than worrying about how much work I have to do.
I wish I could tell the world to slow down, to create realistic deadlines and stop trying to cram everything into half the time it would take to do it right. Doing so would save money, too, because you wouldn’t be going over-budget correcting careless mistakes that happened during the rush.
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Harry,
I could not agree with you more! There are so many people who play it so close that it can only be through sheer luck that they manage to get things done on time!
Frankly, I never understood it except to write short deadlines off to poor planning, whether on the part of the individual or their higher authority. Plus, there are many emergency situations, and opportunities that people choose to take on for other motives such as exposure or experience. I guess those are worth a little inconvenience.
But, as standard operating procedure, I, too, believe that we’d all be more efficient with longer timeframes which may reduce or eliminate mistakes or wastefulness. However, in business, I doubt that will ever happen-there is a marketing view that even if a buyer takes months to make a decision, when they finally decide on something, they want it immediately. So, to meet that need, everyone down the ladder has to scramble.
My own method is to be conservative with jobs I accept, and then get them down one day earlier than due. This works for me, but may not work for others. Some folks just seem to find their motivation when under pressure, which is probably a good thing. I just don’t need anymore stress!
Serendipity,
Yeah, short deadlines are here to stay, unfortunately. Most of the “emergencies” I’ve encountered in my career are due to poor planning and procrastination, and as you said, it all rolls downhill. Everyone has gotten into the habit of passing the buck; the bigwigs in charge let something slip, or they get an idea they want done fast, and in turn, it’s passed to the next person all the way down to the lowest rung on the ladder until people like you and I are left with cleaning up the mess to make everyone shine.
I too try to meet my own deadlines ahead of schedule, I’m not an under pressure person by any means. It’s hard to break a cycle when you’re not the one perpetuating it.