Do you give yourself deadlines and do they help? And if so, how much of a time period do you give yourself?

I ask this because I’m quite good at setting long term deadlines but rubbish at shorter ones. For instance, my daughter got married earlier this month which goes a long way to explaining the dearth of blog posts and other writing activities. We all had the most wonderful day, the bride was beautiful, the groom handsome, as of course they should be, but it became an odd sort of deadline for me – everything was catergorised as ‘before the wedding’ or ‘after the wedding’. So certain things had to be accomplished before the day and other things had to join the ever expanding queue for ‘after’. Now my deadline is ‘before the end of the month I will accomplish…

This works to some extent but is a great excuse for procrastination – after all, if I make my goals on the 1st I have almost 30 days to dodge my goals. So in order to achieve a less pressurised routine I start with what I want to achieve that month , break it down into weekly goals and shorter daily goals. And I’m happy to say it’s working a treat. I’m having a very productive day so far – I’ve even managed to write a blog post!

I’m also reading ‘The Chimp Paradox‘ by Steve Peters which was recommended to me by Magaret Graham. If you’ve read this book you’ll be able able to see that I am finally able to manage my inner chimp. If you can get hold of a copy I’d highly recommend it.