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

Do you real­ly need everything?

When it real­ly comes down to it, is every­thing you believe you have to do and com­plete real­ly nec­es­sary? Could you per­haps switch things around a bit and adapt what you had intend­ed to deliv­er slight­ly so that you can slow down a lit­tle, do what you actu­al­ly have time for more care­ful­ly, and feel bet­ter while doing it?

One high lev­el and two low­er ones

When I occa­sion­al­ly under­es­ti­mate how long some­thing will take to fin­ish and I have a fixed dead­line fast approach­ing, it makes my life and sit­u­a­tion much eas­i­er to define a few degrees or lev­els of qual­i­ty at which I can choose to deliv­er what I promised to do. To make it even eas­i­er, I have cre­at­ed a mod­el illus­trat­ed by a stair­case that is divid­ed into three steps or levels:

• “Prefer­ably this” - At the top of the stairs, I write what I real­ly want to (and orig­i­nal­ly had the ambi­tion to) deliver.
• “If not, this” — On the sec­ond step down I write what I am com­fort­able deliv­er­ing if I do not have time for every­thing I list­ed on the top step.
• “At least this” - On the bot­tom step I write what I real­ly need to deliv­er; the least amount of what­ev­er it is I am doing that I would be OK with send­ing off.

When I am start­ing to sense that I will not have time for every­thing, I quick­ly out­line the three lev­els in terms of my project or task and aim for the low­est one so that I at least have time to do what I real­ly need to do. If I then feel that there might be a lit­tle time to spare, I try to do a few of the things defined on the sec­ond step.

I try to keep a high pace any­ways because I might even cram some­thing from the top step in, but if I do not make it, there are two lev­els below that ensure I get what is either suf­fi­cient or ade­quate done (which will make me feel much less stressed than before I defined the steps).

Do this

If this sit­u­a­tion sounds famil­iar and my approach might suit you, try it the next time you feel you are run­ning out of time when a dead­line is fast approaching.

If you even want to use the illus­tra­tion, you can down­load it here.

Take the pres­sure off

If you, with or with­out my mod­el, clear­ly define to your­self what low­er lev­els or stan­dards you could abide by when deliv­er­ing some­thing to some­one and still do enough, you will also low­er the pres­sure you feel when time is short. You will have more time at your dis­pos­al since less will need to get done and you will be able to work in a more col­lect­ed and sus­tain­able tempo.

What’s your method?

Do you have a method to han­dle the mad­ness that can some­times grab hold of us when try­ing to meet a dead­line and find­ing our­selves with too much to do before it is upon us? Please write to me and share your thoughts — I am sure you know that I am always on the look­out for tips, tricks, and meth­ods that sim­pli­fy our lives and structure.

(Have you ever expe­ri­enced mis­un­der­stand­ings about exact­ly when a dead­line applies? One way to avoid this is to make your dead­lines spe­cif­ic!)