Stop using deadlines!

Should I put deadlines to my goals?

I've wondered about this for a long time. Should I do it?

Since I read many books and watched/listened to many courses when it comes to self-improvement, I can confidently say that most of the gurus in this industry will tell you that you must put deadlines to your goals. Their logic was simple and straightforward: If you don't put deadlines, you will not be motivated to achieve them, or in other words, if your goals don't have deadlines then they are just wishes!

But my wishes come true! or in other words: Don't put deadlines to your goals!

The problem with having deadlines is pretty simple: In most of the cases you can't know how much time you will need to achieve your goal.

And this can lead to many problems. If you have a deadline that is too close, you will fail and your confidence will be shattered. On the other hand if you have deadlines that are too far away, you will have more time then you need and you will not be 'pushed' to achieve them i.e. you will procrastinate.

Think about it for a moment... if you want to write a book and you give yourself only one month to do that, big chances are that you will fail (of course, it is possible as people from nanowrimo have confirmed over and over again but for most people it's simply not possible because we maybe have other stuff to do in our lives and we are not prone to writing etc.)

On the other hand if you give yourself 1 year to do the same task, you will have way more time then you need in most cases. And since you have too much time, you will procrastinate until the last few months.

Since all of this comes of the top of my head, this may be a bad example but I think that you'll get my point.

So my thinking is like this: If you have to put deadlines to your goals, then you have a serious motivation problem. And in that case your main goal should be this: Figure out how to get my ass to work!

With this said, I decided to remove all the deadlines from my life. And I will never go back to using them.

I achieved 17 goals in more or less 3 months without using any deadlines whatsoever. I knew my priorities and I knew what I needed to do. And I was motivated to accomplish them.

That's all you need. You need to know what you want, you need to know your priorities (e.g. should I write my book or create a website first), you need a plan of action and last but not least, you need to be motivated to put that plan of action into action.

I don't see where the deadlines fit into this picture. If you must push yourself to accomplish your goals then you have bigger problems to deal with.

Of course, deadlines are not completely useless but I will talk about that sometime in the future.

Since I've noticed that there are many amazing people here who have amazing brains, I'm open for a discussion! Please give me your thoughts on this.

Nikola Slavkovic