4 Effective Ways To Deal With Deadline Stress At Work

4 Effective Ways To Deal With Deadline Stress at work

In this article on how to deal with deadline stress at work, I share with you some tips that will help you not constantly be under pressure and better deal with deadline stress.

When you are late with work deadlines, you feel stressed and feel like you are losing control of the situation.

Here are 4 tips that will help you eliminate this stressful situation once and for all.

Find out my tips now!

1 – Don’t accept a deadline without negotiating

By following this principle alone, you will have eliminated at least 50% of your difficulties in terms of work organization.

It is true that, depending on your role, you may have different margins for negotiation.

However, what is important for you is to start developing a new habit, which is to negotiate the tasks that will be assigned to you.

If you doubt the effectiveness of this strategy, think about teenagers and how they constantly manage to negotiate everything that is asked of them.

If you are a parent, you know what I am talking about. But in any case, you can learn from their ability to stay confident when it comes to negotiating everything with their parents.

Of course, this is just one example. The important thing is to find the example that fits you perfectly and motivates you to stop automatically accepting every task.

Learning to negotiate requires the ability to be more assertive, and this will take practice and time.

But doing so will improve the quality of your life at work and in any other situation.

One way to facilitate the development of assertiveness is to create the new habit of negotiating more often in your life.

At first, you will start with less important aspects. Then, as time passes and you become more confident, you will move on to more and more important issues.

To explore the topic of habits in more detail, I recommend you read my article on how to change life habits once and for all, in which I address this topic in more detail.

Actionable tip: Start negotiating at work

Next time your manager assigns you tasks, try to negotiate and don’t say yes right away.

It is not the outcome you will get that is important, but your choice to try.

Afterward, write down what you learned from the negotiation so that you can better handle the next conversation with your manager.

2 – Carefully evaluate the time needed to complete your tasks

In a previous article, I discussed this tip, which is useful for both daily and medium-term deadlines.

Research and my practice as a time management coach have taught me that people tend to underestimate the time it takes to complete a given task.

This is a mistake that affects everyone, including your manager and the leaders of your company. If you are self-employed, it also affects your customers, suppliers, employees, etc.

That said, you understand that you cannot ignore this aspect when negotiating with your boss about the work to be done.

One possible solution to limit this collective accumulation of errors is to always ask for more time to complete work assignments.

In this way, you will be able to work with more calm, deal better with unexpected events at work, avoid making too many mistakes, and deliver better quality work.

Another solution is to contrast the initial time estimation for completing tasks with a more pessimistic assessment that takes into account what may not happen as expected.

This will allow you to come to a more realistic evaluation of the work to be done.

Actionable tip: Be less optimistic in your estimations

Next time someone asks you for a deadline to complete a task, ask for time to reflect, and do not give an answer right away.

Try not to give in to the pressure others try to put on you.

So ask for at least 50% more time than you think you need and try to get at least 25% extra time.

This will help you cope with an over-optimistic time estimation to meet the deadline.

3 – Finish what is important first

If you are already in a situation of extreme urgency, you already know that you will not be able to complete everything with good quality.

At this stage, you have the choice between finishing your tasks with an average quality or completing only part of the tasks, but with a good quality of work done.

My advice is to choose the second option because by doing so you will be able to show that you have done your best and avoid wasting time to achieve a better quality level later.

Here is what I suggest you do.

Identify what is really important and prioritize your tasks.

Focus on the most important task and do not move on to the next one unless you have finished it.

Then proceed to other tasks in the order of priority you established.

To maximize your effectiveness during these moments:

Plan tasks according to your chronotype
Get at least 7 hours of sleep per night
Take regular breaks
Schedule time to relax
Reduce distractions

Actionable tip: Notice your moments of inconsistency

Even with the best of intentions, you may not always act consistently with the recommendations I mentioned above.

I invite you to notice those moments when you decide, for example, to take care of an easy task instead of an important one.

Be compassionate with yourself and forgive yourself, because in this way you will also protect your self-esteem and reduce procrastination.

4 – Plan intermediate deadlines

Instead of focusing on a single end date to complete your work, divide the time you have into time units of the same length.

Then divide the total time by the number of units and calculate the percentage of work to be completed for each time unit.

If, for example, a one-time unit corresponds to 10% of the project to be completed, you should complete at least 10% of the work to avoid falling behind.

My suggestion is that you try to complete a little more than 10% of the planned work for each phase so that you have more time to refine the work.

At the end of each unit of time, evaluate the effectiveness of your actions.

Whether you are ahead or behind schedule, take the time to figure out what you can do quickly to be even more effective, reduce stress, and finish the project earlier than planned.

To further motivate yourself and your team members, use pleasure and pain to your advantage.

Describe precisely what will be the consequences for you and others if you do not succeed and what will be the benefits for you and others if everything goes as planned.

Actionable tip: Plan globally

Rather than scheduling your time one day at a time, I suggest you plan your time over a month so that you can set intermediate deadlines.

It will take a little longer at first, but this way you will have an overview of the work to be done, the time needed to catch up, etc.

Conclusion on how to meet deadlines at work and avoid deadline stress

In this article, I outlined 4 tips on how to meet deadlines at work.

If you are interested in the topic of productivity, I invite you to discover all my articles on productivity.

If you are looking for tools to improve your time management skills, I recommend you read my article on the best time management apps.

If you want to take advantage of the expertise of a time management coach, write to us now using our contact form or call us by phone or on WhatsApp at +33 6 69 46 03 79.

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Read this article in other languages

Français : Comment respecter les délais au travail et éviter le stress des deadlines
Italiano: Come rispettare le scadenze al lavoro ed evitare lo stress delle deadline