What If You Miss A Deadline?

AKA Oops

This post is personally appropriate in that I missed my deadline for last Thursday’s WritShel post. There are reasons and there are excuses and there are consequences.

Reasons

• I was sick
• I did not have any back-up entries
• I did not put forth the effort to sit down a write a post

Excuses

• I was sick
• I couldn’t think well enough to write something worthwhile
• It was easier to watch TV or sleep than write a post

Consequences

• There was no post last Thursday
• I felt guilty
• No one hurt me

silver fingers

There are several similarities between the reasons and the excuses. Ultimately it came down to me not doing something. The consequences were not life-shattering – this is a bog about writing, not NASA, I get that.

I also get that this is an entirely self-motivated effort at this point. Whether or not a post appears every Tuesday and Thursday is up to me. It is also up to me how well I plan for unexpected occurrences, such as having draft entries that can be posted with minimal effort and intellectual focus.

So what if you miss a deadline? Who does it affect? What are the reasons, excuses, and consequences?

And what can you do differently so it won’t happen again?

Moriarty: A deadline has a wonderful way of concentrating the mind.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Ship in a Bottle”, 6.12

Oct 13, 2009

Tags: deadline

Categories: time management