In this episode, we discuss how adding deadlines to your tasks is crucial to your execution of those tasks.
Full Transcript
Hi Everyone, welcome to the You’re Daily Cup of Joe Podcast, with your host Joe Bautista. In this podcast, my goal is to give you quick lessons that you can reflect on in your journal so you can grow yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually and have a better career, better relationships, and better personal finances while you enjoy your morning cup of coffee.
I’m also the author of the book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to Get Better Every Day”. In this book, I wrote down over 30 tips to help you grow in those four cornerstones. I’m also the founder of Grow With Joe, where I combine self-development coaching and financial planning for Latino Professionals.
At the end of today’s podcast episode, I’m going to give you a prompt question to reflect on in your journal. The idea is to take one to five minutes to reflect on today’s lesson and write a minimum of one paragraph on how you can apply the lesson in your life. You can use an actual journal, a word document like on Google Drive, or your note-taking app like Evernote. The idea is that you’re actually thinking about how to process the information to help you improve your life.
In today’s episode, we’re are going to talk about how work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. This is know as Parkinson’s Law. So what this law means is that if you don’t give a deadline to your work, it will never get done. I have found that if I give myself a timeline, I will get my work done. If I don’t give myself a deadline, then I don’t accomplish my task.
I have found that this also helps with having difficult conversations. I just tell myself that I’m going to tell this person some hard news on Tuesday at 10 am, and then I strive to make that happen. I told myself that I was going to do this thing and I can’t lie to myself. Of course, sometimes the work takes longer to complete than anticipated, but you can’t get mad at yourself when that happens.
Life is about being intentional though and if you’re disciplined with your life, then this will create the freedom that you desire in your life. When you finish your work on time, that means you can either rest or focus on the next goal. I get a lot of stuff done because I give myself deadlines. I say I’m going to do this and then it gets done. If you get good at doing the things you say you’re going to do, then this simple trait is going to separate you from a lot of people.
To make sure that you actually do what you say you’re going to do, I would just time block your day and say that you’re going to work on this specific thing during this hour and then you’re going to take a five minutes break before you work on the next thing. If you work for yourself or you work for someone else, you need to take control of your schedule. Don’t allow other people to dictate what your goals are. If your goals align with your employer than that’s fine. Just realize that you’re trying to live your life. So know what you want to accomplish and then create a schedule.
Another neat thing that I discovered that helps you with time management is a gannt chart. A gannt chart helps you with your big projects. If a project is going to take a month, you say in the first week you’re going to work on the planning in the first week. Then in the second week, you’re going to work on the gathering of all the supplies and resources. In the third week, you start putting all the resources together. And in the fourth week, you add the final touches before you present the project.
You could do this for a week, month, six months, or a year. It all depends on the project that you’re working on. But when you give your work a timeline and you break into chunks, you’re more likely to complete the work and not stressing out in the end how things are not done yet. This requires you to be a manager of your schedule. If you can’t be a manager of your schedule, then you need to hire a project manager who will ensure that the train keeps moving.
When I do financial planning with clients, I give them homework to complete for our next meeting. I say they can go here to do this part of the financial plan. I try to remove all uncertainty from the equation. I don’t want them to be confused because if they are confused, then I’ll lose them and they won’t get the work done.
Since I know of Parkinson’s Law, I know how valuable deadlines are. If I have a meeting and a client is on the fence about doing a financial plan, I ask them when I should follow-up with them. This way, I can follow-up with them and show them that I’m punctual. Because how you do anything is how you do everything. If I can show a client that I can stick with deadlines, then that will build trust. I did a bad job at this at the beginning of January because I had a lot on my plate but it’s because I took too much work. If this happens, then you need to slow the train down and extend deadlines. Also, my internet was down at the AirBnB I was staying at and that just slowed me down as well. Internet service can be spotty in Latin America and that’s something I didn’t take account for. So it took me a while to figure things out but now I’m okay.
It’s also important to schedule breaks in your day. You’re not a robot and you need to take time to rest. So if you take a day off and go to the beach, just add it to your schedule and enjoy the day. Don’t allow work to creep into your day. You can have a good life if you schedule things out. It doesn’t have to feel rigid either. Just realize that you’re giving yourself constraints on your leisure and work so you can maximize your happiness. I live a good life because I’m disciplined with my time and you can do if you implement Parkinson’s Law into your life.
That’s it for today’s episode, to summarize it, work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion. So if you don’t set any timelines, then the work will never get done. So make sure you tell yourself the day and time you plan to do something and this will increase the likelihood of you doing it because you don’t want to lie to yourself right? Then once you start completing things, you’ll wonder why you didn’t stick to a schedule in the first place. You can use an app like Trello to help you with your time management or you can use a spreadsheet. Whatever system you use, just make sure you’re sticking to a schedule.
So in your journal, ask yourself, what is a project that you want to accomplish? What is a timeline that you can put together to finish it? What tools do you need to make it happen? What resources do you need? Remember that one minute of planning saves your ten minutes in execution time and when you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So make sure you’re not letting yourself down and stick with a plan.
Thanks for listening today! To get a free copy of my book “More You Know, More You Grow: How to get better every day” just go to my website growwithjoe.me/book and just pay for shipping and handling.
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Thanks for joining me today and remember if you go with Joe, you can grow with Joe, cause Joe knows Dough.
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