When you’re scrambling to hit deadlines, it’s smart to take a step back and ask, “Where are all of these deadlines coming from?” Many deadlines come from us, which is great news because anything in our control is easier to fix. Let’s talk about how to give ourselves more breathing space at work.
Below is a transcript of the episode. Enjoy!
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Full Transcript
[Upbeat Intro Music]
Kelly Nolan: Welcome to The Bright Method Podcast where we’ll discuss practical time management strategies designed for the professional working woman. I’m Kelly Nolan, a former patent litigator who now works with women to set up The Bright Method in their lives. The Bright Method is a realistic time management system that helps you manage it all, personally and professionally. Let’s get you falling asleep proud of what you got done today and calm about what’s on tap tomorrow. All right, let’s dig in!
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Hey hey, and welcome back! So, as we’re looking at this whole year in front of us right now, this fresh new year ahead of us, I want to nudge you to give a closer look to and consider your work deadlines, and in particular, I want you to really start kind of just asking, “Where are these deadlines that are in my calendar coming from?” Really what I want you to keep an eye out for is where are you realizing that you choke yourself up with deadlines and overcommit yourself and overcommit that limited time we all have because it’s your fault? What I want you to hear by that is that when something’s my fault, I mean, it can be hard, but it’s also very empowering to me because it is much easier to fix something when it’s in our control than when it’s not in our control, right?
I use this fault language because I think that’s typically how we think of it, like, “Oh, my gosh. This is my fault. I really choked myself up with this. I can’t believe I did this,” all that kind of stuff. But instead of beating ourselves up, really keep in mind, “I have the power to change this. Whether it’s the particular deadlines we’re looking at or on a going-forward basis in the future, I can change how I set my deadlines.” And so, to me, it can be a really awesome thing to realize when something is “my fault.” So let’s talk about some situations that this happens in and then, knowing that, what we can do on a going-forward basis to help avoid this.
So there are two kind of easier examples that come to mind that I think are pretty easy to spot and fix, and they might not apply to you, but in case they do, I figured I’d throw them out there.
Avoid Stacking Deadlines – 2:09
The first actually comes from one of my clients who is a wonderful client. She’s a partner at a law firm, and I think we were meeting on a Friday, and she was trying to wrap something up before we started talking, and she was like, “Sorry, it’s just that Fridays are always so crazy for me.” I was like, “Why are Fridays so crazy for you?” It just took me asking that question, just because I was curious, that she looked at me, because we were on Zoom, and I could just see the lightbulb go off in her head, and she was like, “Because I tell everyone I’ll have it to them by the end of the week.” She realized she had been choking herself up with her deadlines just by saying that. That easy phrase that a lot of us say that rolls off the tongue, we’re like, “Yeah, yeah, by the end of the week I’ll have it to you,” which obviously all stacks up, then, on Friday and you’re ending up doing a lot of work “by the end of the week” at the end of the week, which is that Friday.
That’s such a great example and an understandable example of how we use something that just rolls right off the tongue like “by the end of the week” that really has the somewhat obvious but sometimes we don’t fully appreciate impact of stacking a lot of deadlines up on the same day at the end of the week on that Friday so that every week finishes that way.
So if you feel something similar, if you notice something similar in the cadence of your weeks or your months or the quarters or whatever it might be, consider if you’re using a “by the end of whatever, I’ll get it to you by whatever,” and there’s a day that is specific to that, whether it’s every Friday or, again, by the end of the quarter, but suddenly that’s a turn of phrase that you use a lot and suddenly all these projects are kind of all stacking up, all these deadlines are stacking up at the same time, that can be something you want to avoid.
So one other alternative is to say something more like, “I’ll get it to you in about a week,” or “I’ll get it to you in about two weeks,” because that is a rolling deadline, right? On Mondays that would mean next Monday. On a Tuesday that would mean the following Tuesday. You can say “by about a” to build you in some wiggle room, and that is more of a rolling setup, so your deadlines are scattered around time versus all stacking up on a Friday.
Similarly, and this one is a little more rare but I think does happen is the whole, “Oh, we’ll do that in January,” which you might be feeling right now. So if, beginning in Thanksgiving, you tend to punt a lot of stuff until January, that’s all, obviously, going to have everything stack up in January and make your January a little crazy. If you have little kids, then you know that Januarys can be a really hard month to get work done. So that is just like a double whammy for you. So what you want to really think about here is moving beyond the January time.
Another one that I think is kind of common that I can feel myself do is, during the summer, “I’ll do that in the fall. I’ll do that in the fall.” But suddenly all these things are stacking up in September, so you just want to catch yourself, if you’re consistently punting things to a Friday or to January or to September, really catch yourself and really try and spread those deadlines out around so that you’re not choking yourself up by really stacking up deadlines at the same time.
Now, you also might do this on a more generalized basis, and this is definitely where I fell, especially the first couple years I was practicing law. I wanted to show that I was eager and that I was a good team player, and I would just get work done and I was a hard worker. And so, I would get called to partner’s offices. I’d go sit in there. I’d get an assignment, and they’d say, “When can you have this to me by?” And I would be doing this mental Tetris in my head of, “Oh, I’m gonna do this other project I have to do. If I did that tonight instead of tomorrow morning, then I could move this thing that they’re giving me now to tomorrow morning,” so I would say, after doing all this mental math in my head, I’d be like, “Tomorrow at noon,” and they’d be like, “Awesome!” And I took that enthusiasm to be like, “We love how fast you’re getting this work done, so that’s awesome.” That just reaffirmed my crazy deadlines that I was setting for myself.
Maybe that’s a good approach when you’re young. I don’t know. When you’re new at a job, maybe that’s a good approach. But over time I started to just feel really exhausted and like the quality of my work was, I felt, starting to deteriorate a bit because I was just tired, and I was trying to cram too much stuff into this limited time and energy.
Set The Deadlines That Actually Work For You – 6:24
So because of that, I started to challenge myself to, when I was giving a deadline, not include nights, not include weekends in when I was saying it. Instead of, “Tomorrow at noon,” I would say something like “Friday at noon,” or “Next Monday,” whatever time, and they would still say, “Great!” It was this weird moment of realizing, “Oh, they just want someone to get this work done so they don’t have to do it. They want it done well, but they don’t need it tomorrow.” I realized their enthusiasm was just probably due to getting stuff off their plate and getting it onto the plate of someone else who could do it, that they hopefully over time trusted and things like that. And so, you just need to realize sometimes we misinterpret the enthusiasm we hear as blessing something that actually isn’t necessarily what they intended, and it can reinforce some habits that don’t need to happen that way.
And so, over time, I started even padding it by an extra day, an extra day to give myself some breathing space and some wiggle room knowing more would hit between now and then. It just was so freeing. I was like, “Oh, this is way better,” and I realized I had been doing that to myself. Sure, there are times where it doesn’t work that well, but on the whole, when you stack up all the assignments, my guess is we could have traced back a lot of those deadlines to my own “fault” like we were talking about, but again, that’s so awesome because then I could do something about it. I could shift just my approach, and by shifting just my approach, I was shifting the whole outcome here on my own sanity, my own work product, my own ability to do all of this in a more sustainable way.
I will say, what is awesome about this too is that there are situations that you’re going to get pushback, but they happen more rarely than you might think, and also, usually — let’s go back to me initially saying, “Tomorrow at noon,” compared to, let’s say I was like, “Next Friday by the end of the day,” and they were like, “Well, I need a little bit before then. Can I have it by next Wednesday?” It’s a negotiation, right? We start with our opening offers. Next Wednesday, even though it’s not the following Friday that I wanted, is still a lot more time than tomorrow at noon. So I want you to hear that this is a negotiation, and so, you want to start building in a little bit more extra room than you actually even need so that if there is some pushback that you get still a deadline that works for you and works for you far better than what you might have been promising right now as you’re listening to this.
Inquire About External Deadlines – 8:57
Now, there are some occasions, some organization cultures, maybe working with a particular person or a particular department where you’re gonna get more pushback on this. They want things now, or even you don’t set out a date, and they’re like, “We need this tomorrow by noon.” Unfortunately, sometimes that happens, and there are ways that we can talk about how to avoid those scenarios. I’m not gonna dig into that today because I will not go down rabbit holes. I’m really working on that. But what I want you to hear is that if a deadline doesn’t make sense to you — there are deadlines you’re gonna get where they’re like, “We need this tomorrow,” and you understand why. You don’t like it. You don’t like what it does to your life, but you understand why they need it tomorrow, that is what it is, and you have to do that kind of stuff, and you can work to avoid it in the future.
But if you get a “tomorrow at noon” type thing and you don’t understand where it’s coming from, that can be a great opportunity. And this is from a client of mine. This is not my idea. I thought this was brilliant that she does this. She would say, “Is there an external deadline I need to be aware of?” Because if you shift from the person saying, “I need this now,” and being empathetic and empathizing with them, they’re probably feeling that frantic, high-emotion feeling that we all get and it’s like, “I need this now because then I need to do this work,” and we’re all stressed out about our work so it kind of bleeds into our requests for other people. Giving that person the question of, “Is there an external deadline I need to be aware of,” can really defuse that high-emotional state and help them think about, “You know what? I don’t actually need this by tomorrow.” And if there is a deadline, then it’s good to be aware of that as well.
So you’ll kind of win either way in that scenario because you can hopefully diffuse the emotional, heightened feeling that is requiring the deadline to be tomorrow and instead help push the deadline out further, or you learn something about the external deadline that will, again, help motivate you to do the thing you have to do today but then also potentially help you avoid situations like that in the future.
You Don’t Have to Memorize Your Calendar – 11:06
All right, so there are two caveats to this before we keep going. The first is I don’t expect you to know your calendar perfectly in your head. I certainly do not. So there are going to be times where you’re on a zoom call or a phone call or in someone’s office getting an assignment or even they swung by your office, and when it comes to the deadline question, you’re kind of drawing a blank. You’re like, “I know I’m really busy, but I don’t know what all the things are,” I just want to invite you to have the confidence to just say, “You know, let me check my calendar before I can confirm, but I think I can get it to you by X date.” You can just kind of guess about that.
Then I would just put on your meeting notes a reminder to follow up with them on the deadline, and then go back to your office, go back to your computer, really look at your calendar, decide when you could have it. If that date works for you still, awesome, but if you need a little more time, then that’s a great opportunity for you to send them an email and you have the reminder on your meeting notes to do that, to send them an email and say, “Actually, I’m gonna need ‘til this time to do it.”
If you need more time, ask for it on the front end. It’s one of those things that I just think it makes people feel held and kind of safer when you reach out to them on the frontend and say, “You know, I’m actually gonna need to adjust this by this place,” instead of them approaching when they thought they were gonna get something and then you ask for more time. I don’t know why but psychologically I feel like it can feel a little weird, where the earlier you could do that the better.
So I like kind of keeping that door open of, “Let me check my calendar before I can confirm, but I think I can get it to you by this date,” and then, again, following up with an email if you can’t, or, if you really have no idea is, “Let me check my calendar before I can get back to you, and I’ll get back to you later today about when I can get it to you.”
How Can We Identify Our Capacity? – 12:47
The other thing I want to say is someone listening to this is really frustrated listening to this because they’re like, “But how do I know kind of how long things are gonna take with my capacity?” I felt this kind of almost screaming frustration when people would swing by my office and be like, “Do you have the capacity to take this on?” And I’m like, “I don’t know what that means.” Obviously, I know in theory what that means, but how do I know? How do I know objectively what my capacity is and how full it is with other work?
And so, if that’s you, please know that you’re not weird. You’re not dumb. We’re not really taught how to know those things, and maybe some people don’t need a more visual objective understanding of those two things (your capacity and your workload) and how they interact and then how you can make calls about whether you can take something on or when you can get something done. But I need that. I am someone who needs the visual understanding of all of that. I cannot manage it all in my head, at least not with confidence. I really believe we need confidence about what our capacity is, what our workload is so that we have the confidence to protect our own workload and keep it reasonable and protect the outside-of-work life and all of that.
So if that’s you, and I know this is a really annoying thing to say, I really encourage you to jump into a Bright Method program because that is what we do. That is the system that I teach you so that you can make these calls with a better understanding, with more clarity on your end and more confidence so that you are making these calls with that clarity.
Ask Where the Deadline is Coming From – 14:23
Okay, so knowing all of that, as you’re looking at this upcoming year, there are kind of two approaches here. The first is for your currently established deadlines. If you are feeling overcommitted with those deadlines, it’s really worth looking at each of them and just asking, “Where’s this deadline coming from?” If it’s from you, that’s awesome, and maybe you can change it. You’ll probably have to communicate the changes to those deadlines but, again, the earlier you can ask for extensions, the better. And so, that might be something you might want to consider is reaching out to whoever’s expecting whatever it is and explaining, “I’m gonna need a little bit more time on this. I’ll get it to you by this new date.” Build in that wiggle room, and then if you can over-deliver on it, awesome. But at least now you have that built-in wiggle room and it’ll really reduce your stress now for you.
If it’s not coming from you but there’s also no hard external deadline driving it, you could also consider asking. That’s kind of separate from what we’re talking about today but just throwing it out there. I don’t think just because it didn’t come from you doesn’t mean you can’t ask to have it extended. If you’re feeling really stressed out right now about your workload, might as well ask and see how it goes.
Build In Wiggle Room – 15:32
And then on the going-forward basis, as deadlines are set for projects that you have going on or new projects that come in, keep everything we’ve talked about in mind. As you set deadlines, don’t account for nights and weekends when it comes to establishing when you can get work done. Build in wiggle room. You will need it, whether it’s for that project or because some other project’s gonna land in your lap and take away some time that you thought you’d have to give to the original project.
In addition, building in that wiggle room helps you from a negotiation standpoint. As I said, if you can say, “What about next Friday?” And they’re like, “Well, I don’t want next Friday but how about Wednesday,” that still might be the time you needed, and so, that can be really, really beneficial.
In addition, remember, don’t use those phrases that kind of stack up work all on the same day or same time period. So stay away from, “End of the week,” or even if you’re used to saying something like, “The beginning of next week,” or something like that just avoid those types of sayings. Try and use either date-specific deadlines and/or the in-a-week or in-two-weeks deadlines because then it at least sprinkles your deadlines around based on when you’re saying it.
Similarly, be careful of the January-type things. That might be something that you want to put in your calendar for next November to remind yourself not to do if you’re struggling right now with it. Similarly, in the summertime, don’t do the, “Oh, in September, in September. In the fall we’ll deal with that,” because, again, it really can stack up things there.
All right? I hope that helps! When it comes to time management (or I guess anything in life) embrace when you figure out something is your “fault” because it means it’s in your control and therefore you can change it in an easier way than all the things that are out of your control. So I really love that kind of reframe of anything where you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, this is totally my fault.” You can really learn the lesson and apply the lesson because it is in your control. So that’s really, really wonderful. Embrace that.
Join The Bright Method Program – 17:33
As I was saying, if all of this makes sense to you from a theory and concept standpoint, but you have a lot of difficulty implementing this from a practical standpoint because you’re like, “Yeah, but how do I even know what date to give because I’m not even sure when I’m doing everything on my plate or how it fits together,” and even how to break down projects and things like that, I really encourage you to jump inside a Bright method program.
My January through March program is now open for annulment. Enrollment closes on Thursday, January 18th, and we kick off a week later. That gives you time to give me some information that I need and then I can review it so that we’re ready to rock when we kick things off on January 25th. It’s an eight-week program. We work through each chapter of The Bright Method to really set up this practical, realistic, visual system that you can use to manage your time with a whole lot more confidence.
Also, given just the state of the world and the economy, I also created a nine-month payment plan. It used to be just a three-month and a five-month payment plan, but I know that things are tricky right now. And so, in addition to having some scholarships for this that are now filled, I also extended a payment plan for over nine months to make it a little bit easier.
I truly believe in the value of this investment. It will serve you for years and years to come and is really life changing, and I say that because a lot of clients have told me that. I mean, I truly believe that everything comes back to time, so if we can confidently manage our time, the ripple effects of that touch every part of our life, and I would truly love to help you experience that.
So, if you’re interested, check it out at www.kellynolan.com/bright. You’re welcome to email me any questions you have at ke***@********an.com, and I hope to see you in there! More importantly, thank you for being here. I’ll catch you in the next episode!
[Upbeat Outro Music]
