Do you know why Neil Armstrong got to the moon?
The one-word answer is “Deadline” and in a moment, you will know what deadline got the first man to step on the moon.
“What would happen if we make it this way?”
“One should be like them.”
“Why didn’t I do it?”
Do these phrases sound familiar? ….When “should” wins over “do it”…
As humans, we constantly live in a mixture of a real-world and a world of dreams. It is good to have dreams, so do not eliminate them. But the problem appears when you can’t distinguish the dreams, the free ideas, creativity, and fantasies from work that really has to be done.
There can be many reasons why something won’t be done but in one way or another, it will always come down to a missing time schedule.
Strive for the moon with a deadline
Coming back to the first man on the moon, the deadline set by John F. Kennedy in 1961 when he addressed a message to Congress was the start of the moon journey.
“This nation should commit itself to achieve the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”
The message transforming the statement to an action plan was the deadline,
“…..before this decade is out,…”
Kennedy, as all famous leaders knew that a goal without a deadline will not be achieved. In July 1969, half a year before the time goal, the first man was walking on the moon.
The classical New Year resolutions are mostly goals but without any timeframe, and sometimes we have all been victims of our “false” goals on the 1st of January. (See my blog post of the 30th of December, 2016)
There are three main reasons why a deadline is so important:
A Deadline will force you to make an action plan.
When creating a deadline you need to think through how to reach your goal, the different steps to take. When analyzing in-depth the necessary steps to take and the time it will take, maybe you come to the conclusion that the timeframe isn’t realistic. That’s fine. Change the deadline if possible and stick to the new one.
A Deadline will help you to prioritize.
A project of a certain size contains many different tasks. The deadline will force you to prioritize with the goal to not missing the deadline. In any project, we are surrounded by fun and passionate tasks as well as boring and less engaging tasks. The deadline will be a good assistant to not “float away” with the fun part only of the project.
A well-defined Deadline will push you through the project.
Do you remember that day when the alarm clock was ringing, telling you that you must go up and not be late for school or your job? Even if it was hard to get out of bed, the deadline pushed you to do it anyway. The same goes for anything you are doing in life.
Goals don’t produce impressive results if any – goals with deadlines do.
Three suggestions on how to a create deadline you will achieve:
Set a realistic deadline.
You need to think through in detail how to achieve your goal. Use the classical method by creating one “best-case scenario” and another “worst-case scenario”. A realistic scenario commonly is found in between the two, “the best” and “the worst”.
Create a deadline with consequences.
Go back in time and remember how you were rewarded or punished when sticking to or missing a deadline. Use the same strategy with yourself and your own and self-produced deadline. As you can notice, it’s very much about discipline.
Involve other people to hold you accountable.
Once your project with a specific deadline has been established, launch it with a lot of “noise”. If other people are aware of your deadline, they will for sure “check you up” and hold you accountable for what you are doing. If no one is aware of your timeframe, it is easy to cheat yourself as no one will know about it.
When I decided to become an online marketer two years ago, I had a plan on how to achieve it all. The plan with a timeline and various sub-deadlines forced me to work in a very organized way. Sometimes things didn’t turn out as smooth or fast as I had thought, and the deadline forced me to work harder and smarter.
By joining the Six Figure Mentors, I gained a lot of time, as thousands of their students have gone through exactly the same process. The highly automated system and the “excessive” number of training sessions, helped tremendously to achieve the goals faster and not to miss the deadlines.
Whatever support will back you up in your project, you will always come down to the pure reality that nobody is going to set the deadline for you. And without a timelimit, goals are meaningless.
Write it down, tweak it, fine-tune and take a decision. Make your own “Kennedy speech” to Congress. After the time frame is set, there are only two things more to do:
- Get started. Remember, the moon landing shouldn’t happen within the established timeframe without immediate action.
- Select a proven system to help you to achieve what you are aiming for. In today’s world, you don’t need to “invent the wheel” over and over again. For most projects you might have in mind, readymade systems already exist.
If you ever have been thinking about online marketing, which silently and little by little is taking over the world of commerce, the Six Figure Mentors is something I highly recommend. It changed my life, and now I’m on my way to “the moon”.
Whatever your idea is, set a goal, set a deadline, and get started….NOW!
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