Top Ten Tricks To Meeting Deadlines

“I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”
–Douglas Adams, British author

In Issue #128

Top Ten Tricks To Meeting Deadlines
by Monica Day

The Universe played a trick on me. It endowed me with a great interest, and even a little talent, for making my living as a writer – and almost no internal ability to meet deadlines. So I’ve had to develop a few tricks of my own to compensate for my weakness in this area.

And since I’ve got a few deadlines looming (imagine that!) I’m going to get right to them – and then go put a few into practice!

#1 Work in 15-Minute Windows: Schedule your day in 15-minute increments – even if you’re going to be working for an hour straight on something, look at it as four 15-minute slots. This helps you get back on track more easily when you stray, and keeps time from slipping away so quickly when you are nudging yourself back on track four times an hour.

#2 Schedule Regular Colleague Check-In Calls: Very few people who work alone are able to achieve a constant state of hyper-focus. Most of us need the occasional push to keep going. Find someone who is willing to play the occasional “boss” role and call you to make sure you’re not playing solitaire on your computer when you’ve got deadlines looming!

#3 Break Down Projects Into Tasks: Rather than writing down the deadline for a draft or a headline and lead in two weeks, break it down further. How many hours of research will you do? Write down the deadline for finishing that stage…and so on. When you come up with intermediate deadlines along the way, the biggie doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

#4 Pad Your Schedule: Let the client think it’s due next Wednesday, but plan your time as if it’s due the Friday before. The extra few days will give you time to polish the piece and make it better…or allow for wiggle room in case life gets in the way of work – as it often does!

#5 Do Deadline Work First: Deadlines remind me of those old pressure cookers my grandmother used to boil rice when I was little. It would let a little steam out in a steady stream out the top. But if the steam got blocked, the lid could blow right off the pot! When you’re writing to a deadline, you have to let a little of the steam off every day so it doesn’t build up or it starts to constrain your ability to do the writing at all. Instead, work on a project that has a deadline looming first thing in the morning every day. Making progress on it will let out some of the air on the pressure that builds up and keep it flowing smoothly right up until it’s due.

#6 Make Your Work Visible: Put a dry erase board somewhere near your desk and map out your deadlines and projects up on the wall. Getting a quick visual of your work flow is a great way to stay on top of it.

#7 Cheat: If writer’s block is an issue for you, surround yourself with loads of reading material. When you get stuck, don’t just stare into space or go do some laundry. Read something similar to what you’re writing and see if it inspires you to keep going. As a mentor once drilled into my head, “That’s why they call it copywriting!”

#8 Schedule Breaks: I know this sounds counter-intuitive…but it works. A five or ten minute stretch break every hour will re-energize you and make the work go faster. Writing might seem like a sedentary act when you’re sitting at the computer for hours, but it’s very active inside your head. Supporting that internal activity with your body will help the words flow faster and the deadline will be met more easily as well!

#9 Declare A Moratorium on Distractions: Know the difference between a break and a distraction. Checking email, answering the phone, paying bills – all of these are distractions. They simply pull your mind in a different energy-depleting direction. Take a minute and make up two lists: one of activities that give you energy and a second of those that deplete your energy. When you’re writing on deadline, pick only activities on the refreshing side of the page, and leave the rest for another time.

#10 Just Do It!: You knew I was going to say this, right? Once you’ve thrown every trick in the book at the deadline, and it’s about to do another fly-by past your office…time to hunker down and just do it. Put one word in front of the other…eventually they add up into a finished project and you’ll be on to the next before you know it.

And now, without further ado, I’m on to a few deadlines of my own! If you have some tricks that haven’t made it onto my list, please share at admin@copyprotege.com.

Resource Referral: Before You Make The Leap…Get A Net!

Last week, I encouraged you to get a jump on those New Year’s Resolutions. Here’s another resource that will help you do just that.

So if 2008 is the year you become a six-figure copywriter this year – get started making it happen today – not January 1st. Pick up AWAI’s Making the Leap – A Practical, Hands-On Guide to Launching Your Successful Freelance Career.

It hands you an easy-to-follow 8-step plan to getting your career off the ground. It’s simple. It’s cheap. It’s easy. I don’t know about you, but I plan to enjoy the coming joys of spring and summer…so let’s get these little practical matters of achieving our goals and dreams out of the way, shall we?

Reader Feedback: Gratitude Was Flowing All Around

Thanks to everyone who wrote us last week in response to our messages on gratitude and giving thanks. We hope you had an inspiring week. And just to put the cherry on top of the sundae, I wanted to send a story one of our readers shared with us about how powerful the force of gratitude can be…in case you weren’t already convinced!

As a typical human being, I need to remind myself daily to appreciate all the good things in life. Being grateful does act like a magnet, drawing better situations and opportunities to my attention. If I focus on the negative, I miss seeing those opportunities. The advice given in "The Secret" to be happy now is worth its weight in gold.

I know from personal experience that our minds are more powerful than we can imagine. At the risk of sounding "out there," I want to share a secret with you – one I don’t tell too many others about. I keep a collection of twisted spoons in a drawer at home that I actually bent using the power and energy of my mind. Crazy? Yes – if I hadn’t experienced it myself, I wouldn’t believe it either.

At a seminar I attended years ago, every single person was able to accomplish a spoon and fork bending experiment successfully. We brought our own silverware with us to avoid any accusations of product tampering. At a certain point, the energy level in the room was so intense you could practically feel it crackling. The metal warmed and softened, and it was easy to twist into bizarre shapes.

I watched a young boy, probably no more than 10 years old, gaze at a fork with such intensity that the tines melted like putty. He was sitting close to me with his parents. We adults used our hands to bend our softened silverware, but this boy only used his mind. I was flabbergasted as I watched him. Seconds later, the metal hardened, and our silverware was once again cold and inflexible. To this day, I’ve not been able to recreate those moments on my own. It took the combined energy of everyone in the room to reach the level needed to actually warm and soften the metal.

The experience was a life-changing event that left me with a new appreciation for the power of my mind. My spoon collection is a reminder to me that nothing is impossible.

Surely if I can bend spoons, I can become a successful copywriter, right?

– K.M.

Indeed!