Sept. 27, 2024
22: Ditch the Fake Due Dates and Make Consistent Progress Toward Your Ideal Narrative
If you want to craft a compelling work-life narrative, you need to stay focused on work that yields the stories you want to be able to tell about yourself.
But truly important and impactful work tends to happen over time.
So to keep yourself on track, you set arbitrary due dates for key milestones... and then you miss them. And then you reset your due dates — and do it again and again. It's not just inefficient. It can make you feel bad.
There's a better way to keep the momentum going and feel better about yourself in the process. Host Doug Lester shares a tip he originally picked up from Carl Pullein, the productivity guru.
Check out Carl's work and offers at carlpullein.com.
And make sure to consider Carl's Time Sector Method course, which is the basis of Doug's entire project and task management system.
Note: These are not affiliate links. They're just helpful.
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Transcript
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If you want to craft a compelling work-life narrative, you need to manage your time effectively.
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You need to focus consistently on the kinds of work and projects that support the stories you want to be able to tell about yourself.
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But that's easier said than done.
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If you're anything like the mid and senior level executives I work with, Back to back meetings and fire drills can make it hard to set aside time to do longer-term work that builds the narrative you want to tell about yourself, and even harder to focus on consistently building the strong network inside and outside your company that will be so critical to your career advancement.
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So how do you ensure you focus on the things that really matter, and not just the fire drills and back-to-back meetings?
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Stick around, and I'll share a simple trick that can help.
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Time management has got to be one of the biggest challenges my clients face.
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Sometimes, I think it's an even bigger challenge than navigating the scary office politics and power struggles I often hear about.
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And those can be tough.
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But, back to time management.
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It's always struck me that one of the most popular posts I ever wrote on my blog was about using due dates effectively in project and task managers.
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You heard me right.
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Due dates.
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The gist of the post was that you should tend to avoid using due dates for tasks because, more often than not, they're fake.
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You make a due date up arbitrarily because you'd like to get something done by a particular date, but because tasks often take us longer to complete than we anticipate, not to mention meetings, fire drills, and life commitments getting in the way, you keep delaying tasks and resetting their due dates over and over again, which, frankly, is a waste of time.
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I can personally attest to that one.
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And ultimately, constantly resetting all those lapsed due dates, and they're often an angry red once they're overdue, it makes you feel like a failure, repeatedly.
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It's not a good way to live.
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But there is a smart way to use due dates to make progress consistently towards longer-term goals, like building a strong professional network, or a big project that's weeks or even months off.
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And it's not my idea.
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I picked this up from Carl Pullein, a prolific productivity guru.
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You can find him on YouTube or at his website, carlpullein.com, where he offers courses and coaching.
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I'm not mentioning Carl because I get anything out of it.
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It's just that he's been helpful to me, especially his Time Sector Method for managing projects and tasks.
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You should check him and his stuff out.
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I'll put some links in the show notes.
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So what's this smart way to use due dates?
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Well, the idea is that your big project or task might actually have a due date, or if it's a goal, maybe the due date, and I put that in quotes, is set for the end of a quarter or year.
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That's fine, but it's not going to help you make progress on that project or goal because your project or task manager will likely keep it out of view in favor of more current and urgent projects and tasks.
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So here's the trick.
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Let's say you want to focus on strengthening your professional network.
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I talk about that a lot.
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And that involves emailing or DMing people occasionally and scheduling a coffee or a lunch now and then.
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It's nothing too crazy, but it's not the kind of thing you can just do at the end of the year for a week and then consider your goal accomplished.
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You need to work on it consistently, ideally a little every week.
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Let's say you have a project or a task called"Strengthen Professional Network" and it has a due date for the end of the year because it's an overall goal.
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If the goal is a project in whatever system you're using, then create a repeating task for that project And if it's a task, then create a repeating subtask and call it or call either one"CTW I'll explain what that means in a second...
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CTW Strengthen Professional Network." So, what that really stands for, the CTW, is Continue to Work On.
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So the whole thing,"CTW Strengthen Professional Network," stands for Continue to Work On Strengthen Professional Network.
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And in the description or note for that task, put in a few bullets or a note to remind you of what it means to do this work.
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In the case of strengthening your professional network, maybe it means pinging at least two people you know on LinkedIn to check in or just say hello.
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and ensuring that you have at least one networking launch, coffee, or call on your schedule in the next two weeks.
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I just made that up, but it doesn't need to be anything crazy.
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But still, you get a measure of what it means to be consistently strengthening your professional network, or in other words, working towards your goal.
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And now that you have a task or a subtask named"CTW Strengthen Your Professional Network," you need to set a due date.
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But in this case, the due date, it's not really a deadline.
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It's a prompt that keeps that goal of strengthening your professional network front and center instead of out of sight and out of mind.
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Next you're going to decide the cadence for this recurring reminder or prompt.
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Let's say your schedule is such that you typically have quieter Friday mornings than most other days.
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Maybe you set the CTW task for your networking to recur every Friday.
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So when Friday comes, the task pops up, you open it, and you're reminded to reach out to two people and check your calendar for upcoming networking conversations.
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If you don't have any, then schedule one or two, and then you're done.
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Complete the task, and it will recur and pop up again next week to remind you.
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As insurance, you could also put a recurring event on your calendar every Friday morning for about 30 minutes to support this new habit.
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It's actually called time blocking, and I've written about it in the past, and I've probably talked about it, too.
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And I know it seems a little redundant, but I find that doubling up on the prompt in my task manager and calendar is helpful, and I'd recommend it.
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Some people may say,"Don't do it.
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And you can use this approach for just about anything you need to work on over time.
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I use it to create this podcast.
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I don't think I would have been able to do it without it.
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My Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays tend to have breaks where I can work on the podcast.
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So I have a repeating task called"CTW..." or"Continue to Work On Current Podcast Episode," and it pops up every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.
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I also have some time blocked off on my calendar, often in the mornings, because for me, at least that's the quietest time.
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On those days, I know I should be spending at least 30 minutes to about an hour on the podcast, sometimes a little longer.
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If I do, I'm pretty certain I'll stay on schedule.
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The cadence or pattern of repetition and the time you need for it will, of course, vary by task or the type of work.
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And here are the two things to keep in mind about this CTW or Continue-To-Work-On approach.
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First.
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Don't have too many of these.
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Choose your most important and consequential longer-term work, and stay focused on those things by setting up the CTW tasks.
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If you have too many of them popping up or have them scheduled on your calendar, you're likely to start ignoring them.
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I think you know how that happens.
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Second, if you use the CTW approach, then you can use fewer due dates in your projects.
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For this podcast, it would be tempting to give each part of the process a due date.
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A due date for the writing, for the recording, for the editing, for reviewing the transcript, etc.
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But life is unpredictable, and so is my schedule sometimes.
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So if I were to start setting due dates for those steps, I'd be falling into the trap of setting fake due dates.
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There's really only one due date, and that's the date I publish the episode.
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And I know from experience if I put in the time on a regular schedule with my"CTW Current Podcast Episode" tasks on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, I'll generally be able to keep up.
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Do I ever fall behind or have to adjust the schedule?
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Of course I do.
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But then I just set the next occurrence of my repeating or recurring task, to a day that's a little sooner.
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Let's say on a Friday or Sunday if I'm working on the podcast on Thursday and realize that I'm not going to get everything that I need to do done.
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So give this a try.
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Maybe for a big project that will ultimately support the narrative you'd like to be able to share about yourself, or maybe for the networking goal that will allow you to do the actual sharing.
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Whichever one it is, get rid of all of the fake due dates associated with it in your project or task manager.
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Instead, create a recurring CTW task on a cadence that makes sense for the project or goal and is compatible with your typical schedule.
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And block some time on your calendar on the same cadence if you don't mind the duplication and want a little insurance.
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And see if you start making more consistent progress toward the big projects and goals that will ultimately support your personal narrative.
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