
The Art of the Self-Imposed Deadline  - peter123
http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/demaio/2009/03/the-art-of-the-selfimposed-dea.html
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imp
I like the advice to "start your day as early as possible, even if you're not
a morning person." I'm definitely not a morning person, but he's right that it
feels so good to have accomplishments done early in the day. Need to do that
more often.

Another one of his points is similar to Randy Pausch's advice to "eat the
biggest frog first."

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ajju
Second the advice about early starts. Engineering and then grad school
inevitably turned me into an insomniac but my productivity since I had to
(more like was forced to) start waking up early as increased a lot.

And re: "Find poetry in the humdrum". If big chunks of your life regularly
feel humdrum, you're either doing it wrong or doing the wrong thing.

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astine
Let's see: meet my self-imposed deadline, or read _The Art of the Self-Imposed
Deadline_? Tough choice.

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tracey_runner
The third suggestion about making the parts of a project get shorter and
shorter so that you feel like you are making progress is really smart. I'm
definitely going to try that.

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jacoblyles
Could anyone offer more advice for making self-imposed deadlines stick?

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flooha
Here's what works for me:

Keep a SIMPLE running list of tasks in a plain 'ol text file and sort them by
priority. If you find yourself "spacing out", grep the list for the easiest
thing you could possibly do and do it immediately. This often get your engine
running.

Assign specific times for surfing and goofing off. Give yourself one hour in
the morning to check email/news/blogs/etc... and don't surf again until lunch.
Another hour or so, max, and then back to work. It's amazing what you can
accomplish when you aren't reading about other people's great accomplishments.

Reconsider blogging. Yes, I know, this is heresy. However, I found that it was
really hurting my productivity, and my desire to create a great blog post was
sucking time away from creating a great app.

Challenge yourself. If you are feeling frustrated, pick the thing you've been
avoiding like the plague and attack it. Tell yourself that you aren't stopping
until it's dead or at least extremely subdued. You'll feel so good at the end
that everything else will seem easy.

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plinkplonk
"Reconsider blogging. Yes, I know, this is heresy. However, I found that it
was really hurting my productivity, and my desire to create a great blog post
was sucking time away from creating a great app."

Using your own advice,("Assign specific times for surfing and goofing off.
Give yourself one hour in the morning to check email/news/blogs/etc... and
don't surf again until lunch. Another hour or so, max, and then back to
work.") one could just allot a couple of hours a week to blogging and thus
avoid it becoming a productivity sink ;-)

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flooha
Agreed. You just have to set priorities and know yourself. My "goof-off" time
is mostly used for research on various topics and that takes priority over
blogging for me.

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clarissalypon
The early or late point is debatable, but the other three bits of advice are
great. That one about about breaking up the project so that each step is
smaller than the last makes so much sense. You have to reorganize the way you
do things probably, but it seems like it will pay off in the end. I am going
to try it.

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bcl
Nothing new here. I've been following these guidelines and others for years as
a telecommuter. Each person works differently, some do well starting early and
others staying up late. I think that consistency is the real key -- stick with
a schedule even when you hit the 80% blahs.

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tracey_runner
I am using these guidelines, starated today. I got a lot accomplished. Let's
see how well it holds up. There's bad consistency and good consistency.

