It is not once or twice in the course of our work, that we have to meet deadlines. They crop up every now and then. That is OK enough. It is only that when we approach the deadline, everything seems to go haywire and there is a mess everywhere. The things we do daily are thrown completely off gear and meeting the deadline becomes a big headche. Is there any way out of this?
Of course there is.
For one thing, if we are well organized and an urgent requirement, like the submission of a project or something like that crops up, there is nothing to sweat about. All we have to do is to compile the material that we already have with us. Easy enough it sounds!
But in real life we are not just called upon to submit reports of already completed projects. We usually get projects and fewer days than required to complete those projects. Then what do we do? The only way out seems to be having to work extra hours. That is not altogether harmful. It never hurts to work a few extra hours
once in a while.
But another alternative is to prioritize. See whether you can arrange your work in such away that you get to do the more important tasks first. If there is some daily work that doesn’t call for too much urgency, keep it aside. Concentrate on the more
important tasks.
Similarly, while you are working there may be a thousand and one distractions at your work place or office. You will have to decide which is more important, attending
to those distractions or focusing on your work. If you can afford to turn off your cell phone, go ahead and do it. Similarly, you could even keep your land phone off the hook if that won’t create a ruckus in your office that is.
Another thing you could do is put up a do-not–disturb sign on your workstation to ward off those disturbances.
You might also have to remind yourself to stay put at your workstation and not linger around either mentally or physically.
It is not necessary that you do all the jobs yourself. If you have a secretary or subordinates, it is about time that you started trusting them with not so very important jobs. The word over here is ‘delegate’.
Delegation can be a managers best time saver.
The three advantages of delegating are:
1. Delegating gives us more time to concentrate on more important issues.
2. Delegating is a very good method of giving practical training in the real situation to our staff.
3. It is a good method of fostering decision making among subordinates.
But at the same time all tasks cannot be delegated. There are certain criteria to be taken into consideration before delegating a task.
The criteria for deciding whether a task can be delegated are:
1. If the task is repetitive, by all means delegate.
2. If the decision can be reversed quickly and easily, it is safe to delegate. For example: if is rearranging the furniture in your office or deciding on the Christmas
celebrations at the office, then it is quite safe to delegate.
3. Check and see if the impact is not too much on others in case the decision is wrong.
4. Check and see if there is too much money or physical resources involved in the decision.
5. Check if delegating is within the companies existing policies.
In this way, if you prioritize you can decide which jobs should be done first, who should do it and what should be done when. Before you know it, meeting deadlines will stop being such a headache.
