5 Ways to Avoid Becoming a Prisoner to Home Business Deadlines

Have you ever won­dered why we call a dead­line a dead­line? The word as it’s used today gen­er­ally asso­ciates a time limit to a project. But have you ever thought about where it came from? What its orig­i­nal def­i­n­i­tion was?

Yeah. Think about it. It came into the lex­i­con mean­ing a true ‘dead’ line; a line in the dirt over which Civil War pris­on­ers could not cross and remain alive. That’s a defin­i­tive descrip­tion. In 1864, the phrase even made it into a Con­gres­sional Report dis­cussing pris­oner of war camps.

When a word, like dead­line, is asso­ci­ated with such spe­cific and dire con­se­quences it’s to be expected that folks want­ing to make a strong point would pick up the phrase and turn it into some­thing with a slightly less deadly — but no less burly — def­i­n­i­tion. Nowa­days, it’s used by busi­nesses, news­pa­pers, and pub­lish­ers more than it is by prison guards, fortunately.

Home Busi­ness Deadlines

How do you han­dle the dead­lines your par­tic­u­lar brand of home busi­ness engen­ders? Most time-​​specific rather than phys­i­cally restric­tive dead­lines have three ele­ments in common:

• Under­stand­ing of the project
• Assess­ment of the tools and skills required
• A sched­ule or plan for to how to com­plete the project within the time allotted.

Here are a five tips to make sure that you will meet your home busi­ness deadlines:

1. Know what needs to be done. Get it in writ­ing upfront. Make sure you and the client agree to every­thing that has to be done before you set time frames.
2. Exceed your expec­ta­tions. There’s nobody to blame but your­self if you fail to put enough wig­gle room into your project’s time line. Every project will have a sur­prise or two around the cor­ner that you sim­ply can’t antic­i­pate. So expect the sur­prise and give your­self plenty of time padding. Both you and your client will be glad you did.
3. Plan and Review. There’s no such thing as too much prepa­ra­tion. Make a plan and review the plan fre­quently dur­ing the process. Even if your dead­line is not flex­i­ble, you must be.
4. Use mile­stones. Seg­ment your time line, espe­cially if the project is daunt­ing or has a truly large scope. Remem­ber the adage about eat­ing an ele­phant. If all you can see is the whole job, it’s far too easy to fall into a pro­cras­ti­na­tion habit or add unnec­es­sary stress to your­self and the oth­ers in your team.
5. Be real­is­tic about your cal­en­dar, your abil­i­ties, and your work pace. Most peo­ple are overly opti­mistic when it comes to project time lines. This is the one time that you really should ques­tion and err on the side of pes­simism, even if you are com­pletely con­fi­dent in your project com­ple­tion assessments.

Dead­lines are a crit­i­cal com­po­nent, so much so that it can seem like your home busi­ness truly could live or die if a dead­line is not met. While there is a glim­mer of truth in that — a seri­ously blown dead­line could com­pro­mise your future work with that client — the truth is that there is no prison guard wait­ing to gun you down if you miss the tar­get and step over that line in the dirt.

As a home busi­ness owner and busy per­son in gen­eral, I’m really glad that a dead­line today is a mutu­ally agreed upon and self-​​imposed line in time rather than dirt.

Are your expec­ta­tions real­is­tic? How well do you set and meet your home busi­ness dead­lines? Please share your thoughts and expe­ri­ence in the com­ments below.

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