What to Do When You Don’t Meet Your Self-Imposed Deadline…Again

“Sometimes you will create self-imposed deadlines, and you won’t make them. You then become your harshest critic and head down a shame spiral.”

— Jadah Sellner, She Builds

Does this sound familiar?

If so, stop it! Starting now.

What might you do instead? Something a little more constructive perhaps…

“This is when you must ask for more time from yourself,” advises Sellner in her beautiful book, She Builds; the Anti-Hustle Guide to Grow Your Business and Nourish Your Life.

“Don’t give up,” Sellner says. “Take a beat, then assess why you didn’t make the deadline, adjust your approach as needed, and reset your pace. Don’t put a timeline on your dreams. We are human, so we won’t always get the timing right for how long things will take us. Find graceful ways to extend the timeline and create more space in your decisions and deliverables.”

As to how to adjust your approach, consider this potent piece of advice by James Clear, author of Atomic Habits; An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones:

“Forget about goals, focus on systems instead.”

Whoa!

So what’s the difference between systems and goals?

“Goals are about the results you want to achieve,” explains Clear. “Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.”

Process is the magic word.

If you set a deadline for yourself to achieve a specific goal by a specific date—and miss meeting that deadline, you can, of course, simply extend the deadline…but if you find yourself missing that deadline and then the next one and so on, then it might be time to take a step back and take a good look at your system/s.

Do you even have a system? If so, great. Might there be a way to fine tune it a little so that it, you know, works better?

If you don’t have a system in place, you might want to make one.

“We think we need to change our results,” explains Clear. “But the results are not the problem. What we really need to change are the systems that cause those results.”

“Fix the inputs and the outputs will fix themselves.”

• James Clear, Atomic Habits

Meeting a self-imposed deadline is an output.

So if you are setting yourself self-imposed deadlines that you are genuinely working towards and yet repeatedly not meeting, don’t beat yourself up. The problem may not be you. The problem might simply be that you haven’t set up an efficient system for yourself that will enable you to meet those deadlines.

The next time you find yourself sailing past a self-imposed deadline, don’t get mad at yourself for missing it. Again. As Sellner says, we’re human…we’re not always going to get the timing right. What we can get right is our system.

Figure out what works for YOU…your day, your life, your dreams, your schedule. Then just keep showing up, day after day, and doing what needs to be done.

Let your focus be on the process versus the goal.

Whatever you do, please don’t give up. Our guess on timing might not always be right; but the timing itself always is.

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