Do you have a deadline? Well I am not talking about deadlines, which clients or bosses give us for their projects. I am talking about deadlines which we create in our mind.
Our deadlines look like:
- By 22 my degrees must be completed
- By 24 I must get the job or build a startup
- By 26 my job or startup must be settled
- By 28 I must marry
- By 32 I must have two kids
And when things don’t work according to our (so called) deadlines we consider it as a failure. Is it really a failure or this is just in our mind? We decide success and failure according to time duration but does life not exist after this time duration or we stop living?
Because of this, “older people shy away from learning new things, saying that what they will do after learning, now the age has passed.” I do not agree with this, there is no time limit of learning and no time limit for living life and to be happy.
Why do we set deadlines?
Life starts with deadlines
You will be amazed knowing that our entire lifestyle (from birth to death) is based upon deadlines. It starts with within 6 months a child should start eating solid, within 12 months child should start walking, within 18 months child should start speaking, within 3 years child should go to school and so on. And we continue with these deadlines for a lifetime.
Mindset
Society plays a major role in setting deadlines. We learn about repeated lifestyles from society. Everyone is doing the same things like study, career, life settlement, marriage, international holiday vacation, children, etc. and everyone is doing these things within similar age. And due to our comparative nature, we try to set deadlines according to those of similar ages. And if we don’t achieve it, we consider it a failure.
Family and friends pressure
Some people do not like to compare, do not think much about society, they live their life on their terms. But family and friends do pressurise and make them convinced that you should do your task within some particular time duration otherwise society or relatives or other people will consider you as failure.
Is the deadline really helpful to us or is it worse?
By the way, I am not saying that the deadline is completely wrong but it is not completely correct either.
Let’s understand disadvantages of deadline:
- If we set an inaccurate deadline, it can be stressful.
- To achieve a goal on time, sometimes we have to compromise with quality.
- In the pursuit of achieving the goal quickly, we also choose the wrong path.
- If we don’t achieve our goal before the deadline, it is disappointing and even sometimes we consider it as a failure.
- When we don’t achieve a goal on time, it can be a reason to give up and never try again.
Now let’s look at advantages of deadline:
- It helps in improving concentration and productivity.
- It helps to be disciplined and scheduled.
- It helps in completing tasks within required time duration.
- It helps in achieving small wins and going ahead to achieve big goals.
- To measure health fitness, deadlines play a good role especially for children.
Conclusion: As we have seen advantages and disadvantages of deadlines, we should definitely consider deadlines but be flexible with them. If you couldn’t achieve your target before the deadline, set the deadline again and this time do extra hard work. There is no failure after the deadline, failure happens when we give up.
Use deadlines as a powerful weapon, otherwise this weapon can be against you.
