Get Moving! Why Your Goal Needs a Deadline

I once had a client who took more than 18 months to finally make her website live.

As you can imagine, this type of behavior drives me nuts!

She fought me every step of the way and kept pushing back the deadline. First she had to get the perfect domain. Next she needed the perfect headshot. Then she needed the perfect logo.

Nothing was ever good enough, and there was no urgency to make progress.

It was only after she saw her competitors earning money with less flashy websites and then missing out on the big holiday season promotion opportunities did she get be butt in gear and publish her imperfect (but good enough!) website.

On the other hand, I’ve challenged many of my other clients to make their websites live in less than a week. And they’ve succeeded!

When you treat deadlines with respect, you’ll reach your goals faster.

A deadline is a powerful motivation tool, especially when you tell your friends, family, clients, or coach the date and they can hold you accountable.

Deadlines dissolve your procrastination and give you permission to make definitive choices instead of dragging your feet forever.

What Kind of Goals Need Deadlines?

• Weight loss
• Money saving
• Cleaning/organizing
• Blog posts
• Social media posts
• Business product launches
• Making new friends
• Date nights
• Breaking bad habits
• Everything!

The more deadlines you add to your life, the more progress you’ll make on any goal.

No more bucket lists that go undone. No more missed opportunities. No more regret!

How to Choose Motivating Deadlines

• Think of a task you want to accomplish in any area of your life or business.
• Determine if it’s a single task (such as sending an email) or a bigger project made up of many smaller tasks (such as publishing a blog post).
• If it’s a project, write a list of all the tasks that must be completed before you can call the project “done.”
• Take the first task of a project (or a single task) and figure out how long it will take you to do it. Consider how long it took you in the past if you’ve done it before. If it’s an entirely new task, just take your best guess!
• Let’s say your task is to throw out the junk food in your pantry. It’s taken you 15 minutes to do this task in the past, so set a timer for 15 minutes and get started!
• If you finish the task within the allotted time, then you can plan that amount of time in the future. If it took longer, then adjust the amount of time whenever you do this task again.
• Write deadlines next to all the tasks on your project lists. Do you have enough time to complete each task? Do you notice that some deadlines overlap with others? Will you have to make choices about which projects get your attention and which ones need to wait?

Easy Edit: It’s helpful to choose the final deadline first and then work backwards for all the tasks that lead to it.

For example, if you want to be at your goal weight 3 months from today, what should your weight be 2 months from now? 1 month from now? How much weight should you lose each week to reach your final target?

Goals without deadlines are just vague dreams.

Without the structure and urgency of a deadline, there’s no way to make progress.

How do you choose your deadlines? Do you have tips for meeting your deadlines faster? Let me know on Facebook.

This post focuses on Step 4 of the Life Editing Process, Rearrange Everything Into a Perfect Flow. For more about life editing and what it can do for you, click here.