10 Best Excuses - Deadline Management

Last night I had some time to myself to really mull this over. I had mentioned in my session that there often is a great difficulty meeting personal deadlines. The likeliest candidate for that is due to needing to meet deadlines every day professionally.

This is one of my personal hurdles and one I struggle with. Here are some pointers;

1. Treat your personal work as a normal project. If you set a deadline, do your best to meet that deadline.

2. Be realistic with your self-set deadlines. If you are too aggressive and you really won't make it, you've created a nearly 100% failure rate. "I can't get this done, I might as well not do it."

Finding that middle ground of being realistic while still reaching your goals is a difficult one. This is where being a project manager would be truly handy. Consider all the factors involved in your project. Try to include time researching, time developing, time co-ordinating (if there are other people involved) and time in QA. If you are able to break down your tasks logically, a reasonable timeline should evolve.

This situation is all too personal for me. I desperately want to finish my site, but I don't want to be too aggressive in development that I'll miss important things. However, I also don't want to simply ignore setting a deadline or I'll allow this project to linger indefinitely.

I am making every effort to be finished my site, TattooCapture, for my birthday on December 1st. A good present, if I do say so myself. I believe I've been reasonable with myself. I've worked a tremendous amount at the expense of my TattooCapture to provide a cushion so I can work in peace.

We'll see how it goes.