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Tick tock: How to get over deadline pressure and do the work
Have faith. Breathe. Don’t get unalived over deadlines. Those who fought the clock and won, share their best get-it-done hacks
Is it deadline-o’clock again? While most lives are driven by alerts, reminders and cut-off points, for some, the countdown to zero hour brings only stress. Suddenly, a one-hour task seems impossible even where there are 60 minutes to spare.
It’s not just creative folks who wait for great ideas to materialise. Even code-writers, CEOs and corporate types freeze as deadlines approach. It’s not procrastination, it’s often low-key unfounded fear. Five professionals share their hacks on overcoming deadline paralysis. Read up before the alarm rings. Just kidding!
Start somewhere. After one too many “staring contests with deadlines” and trying to manifest perfect pitches at the last minute, marketer Bhagyashree Kolge Paralkar, 31, says she’s learnt to revel in the ugly first draft. “You need to trick your brain into starting earlier,” she says. “Once I get something on the screen, it’s easier to keep going.” She noticed that the sooner she started her tasks, the more fun the work seemed. “I realised that I needed to focus on the fun of creating, not just reaching the finish line.”
Divide and conquer. Multi-tasking seems cool, but it ultimately costs you more time, says Manish Sharma, 44, co-founder of Key Communications. He recalls how he and his team had to organise events in 15 cities and manage news dissemination across five countries – all in four days. He turned to the Pomodoro technique: Breaking tasks into smaller sections and setting a dedicated time frame for each. “I set a timer to go off at 25 minutes,” he says. “Then I work on one task without distraction until the alarm sounds.” Then, a five-minute break, and a timer reset for the next task.
Get sneaky. Some people view a project as a marathon – they start slow and break into a full run only later. It gets you warmed up before the actual sprint, says lawyer Isha Prakash, 25. “For me, it also helps to start a task without actually starting it – reading up, making a rough draft, or even jotting ideas down on my phone while travelling.”
Go halfsies. Most deadline paralysis stems from fear of not being perfect. Screenwriter Anjay Rathore, 28, overshot his deadline by over a week because he was so invested in the script he was writing. “It was supposed to be a 10-minute episode. I ended up trying to create a web series,” he recalls. He figured out that it’s easier to create a draft or a skeleton (so the work exists outside your head), than to glitch and obsess without anything to show for it. “Spend 50% of the time executing your task and the other half polishing it.”
Set short deadlines. If you give yourself a month to get something done, you’ll never use all 30 days. Manuj Upadhyay, 30, a senior consultant at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Delhi, learnt to set personal deadlines that fall just before the official deadlines for work proposals, presentations, and reports. “We put our phones face-down, at the end of the table, and only communicate through our laptops. And we ask for help when we need it.”
From HT Brunch, March 08, 2025
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