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For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

It got out of hand

Have you ever felt like you couldn’t make it all work, despite your best efforts? Oth­er tasks took longer than expect­ed, and sud­den­ly, you have less time than you need to fin­ish what you post­poned. And now, there’s no one avail­able to help you — not this close to the deadline.

You’re left to deal with the unpleas­ant con­se­quences on your own. You must inform the recip­i­ent that you won’t make it on time, despite hav­ing promised to do so. Or, you let your fam­i­ly down. The thing you were going to do togeth­er has to be can­celled, or you miss out entire­ly on the fun.

What could you have done?

You might not have made a mis­take when you pri­or­i­tized oth­er things that came up before this, but with your expe­ri­ence of how your work goes, you could prob­a­bly have seen it com­ing. It’s not the first time it’s happened.

You could also have done — and can still do — some­thing to pre­vent it from hap­pen­ing again.

Do this

Ask for help early.

If you sus­pect that you might strug­gle to fin­ish a task (even if you’re hop­ing you’ll pull it off), ask a col­league for help well before things get urgent.

When your col­league gets the ques­tion ear­ly rather than late, they’ll have more cal­en­dar time before the dead­line, and there’s a greater chance they’ll have a gap some­where to help you.

And I’d guess they’re also more like­ly to say ​“Yes, of course!” ear­ly on than when the task is already turn­ing into a scramble.

Right now, skim through your to-do list and look for tasks that you sus­pect might be tough to fit in.

For each of them, ask some­one for help — or at least for part of it. Isn’t it also nice to have some­one help you get start­ed, even if they don’t do the whole thing?

How about mak­ing this kind of review a week­ly habit?

You keep your promises

If you ask for help ear­ly rather than late, you’re more like­ly to find some­one will­ing and able to help. Instead of stay­ing up late and stress­ing more than you’d like, you can keep your promis­es — to clients, your fam­i­ly, and yourself.

What do you do?

How do you ensure you receive the help you need on time? Got any tricks? I’d love to hear about them, because I’ve been in the sit­u­a­tion I just described — and I, too, need to get bet­ter at ask­ing for help before it’s painful­ly evi­dent that I need it. Please email me and let me know.

(Can you some­times feel like you are work­ing on dif­fer­ent things simul­ta­ne­ous­ly but many tasks are left unfin­ished? My tip is when it’s just too much, hide every­thing else!)