How to deal with deadlines as a Creative Entrepreneur

Deadlines; good or bad for you as a Creative Entrepreneur.

As some of you might know I only have one year to prove that I can start a business online. This creates a sense of urgency in my business plans at all times. So today I thought I could talk about if a sense of urgency is useful in business. If creating deadlines and such would be useful.

As a creative entrepreneur starting my own business, I also make my own schedule and that means part of my own deadlines.  This got me thinking about the use of deadlines and such.

Personally I think there are two kinds of people in this world. The ones that work great with deadlines and who need the extra push. Some, however, just get very stressed and start to scramble around.

These are my views and findings on how to handle them.

Pro’s

• Gives you a clear planning

• Gives you more motivation

Cons

• causes stress

• more easily making mistakes

Deadlines and planning

By creating a planning, you almost immediately create deadlines. The key is how strict you are about your planning.

A good planning should give you  enough time to do a task without feeling stressed. If you keep you planning that way deadlines should be no problem but just create a time frame.

The other trick is making some deadlines more important than others. The word deadlines might be not the right word for this. See it more like a checkpoint.

For example, my 1-year deadline is a deadline with the highest priority. By that time, I need prove and, therefore, I need to have made some money. It doesn’t have to be a lot but just enough to make sure it has potential. So selling a few works would be enough or making money with blogging for a month.

My 6-month deadline is when I want to have everything set up, so I want to have my blog to have ads and my shop to have enough work to sell. This deadline is less bug than the one year one because I could also do this on the 7th-month mark.

This is just one that is important to me and it to my business.

My monthly goals which I mention in my update posts are just small deadlines. I would like to do those in a month, but it is not necessary.

The motivation of a time limit

There is a subtle difference between pressure and motivation and it is all in your mindset.

Like I said some people thrive under people pressure. For them, it gives just the right amount of stress to keep going. This could also be seen as just motivation. Some, however, feel pressure only as just that. Then it is just a source of stress.

Which side you fit on is something you’ll need to find out for yourself. Based on that knowledge you can decide on how heavy you make deadlines.

If you think that deadlines make you strive you can make as much as you want. If they make you nervous just use them for the most important stuff or not at all.

For me, the non-existent deadlines are still deadlines so I don’t need to write them down or plan them since they are in my head. Maybe if you are like me letting go of deadlines is an even better strategy.

Stress and deadlines

If you are one of those for who deadlines are only a source of stress I would say to just not use them unless entirely needed. But if you can’t or won’t there are still some tricks such as the prioritizing that I mentioned before.

Another one is making some rules to you deadlines.

The more flexible you are with your deadlines the less change you have to stress. Unless you take this too far and just keep postponing the deadline. When you get nothing done you might just end up feeling more stressed and end up postponing more.

I think that for me it is important to only postpone deadlines for the right reason. Just keeping a list of which reason would be important can help.

For example for me te main two points are;

• my health

• family emergencies

If I can not make a deadline because of my health or a family emergency I will try to not feel guilty and simply postpone.

This way postponing only happens for the right reason and I will not feel stressed or guilty about that.

Personally I just don’t make deadlines all that often so I can keep a consistent line of work going.

The mistakes in deadlines

The last problem with deadlines is that when you rush to make something before a certain time you might not give it your full 100%. This might just mean it is not your best work. I see this a lot in my own blog posts when I write them last minute.

Or it can mean that you make some more serious mistakes. Maybe you get dates wrong or give wrong information.

If you use deadlines it is important to give yourself enough time. You need to make sure you don’t rush your work. .

Giving you self-time to read over a piece or to make adjustments can really make your pieces better and it makes sure you have not made any major mistakes which could have been avoided.

Deadlines can be a crucial part of your business plan. How you use them and how strict you follow them can be a part of your brand or you strategy.

Also, when you start to work with other people you will need to have some experience with deadlines. Another person might want to have more strict deadlines or not at all. You need to be able to adjust to others and work together.

When you have some practise and knowledge of what works best for you, you can use deadlines to you own advantage. Like I said they can be a useful business tool.

I hope this insight helps some of you. Let me know what you think about deadlines? Do they help you or do you hate them?