Stay Calm and Meet the Deadline

The first thing to understand is that it is not the deadline that causes stress but the thought of what will happen if one misses it. This time urgency creates an anxiety-like situation and ultimately prevents you from doing anything at all.

Dealing with time urgency caused by a certain deadline primarily requires a calm state of mind. Some of the ways to achieve that as given below:

1. Plan and prioritize: Once you plan out things according to the time remaining and set your priorities, the mind will stop acting like a child going to school for the first time. This also helps in completing the task at hand.

2. Visualize: It is an inherent characteristic of a human mind to fear the unknown. Visualizing your plan of action in your mind makes things familiar and hence less scary.

3. Focus on present: Probably the best way to do it is to observe your breath. Once you are aware of every breath that comes in and goes out, your mind automatically stops wandering. You feel contained.

4.Stay away from distractions: Going through social media or getting lost in thoughts not only take up the precious time you have in hand but also piles up the level of anxiety for later. So basically when you return to your task, you will end up feeling way more stressed out.

5. Look Objectively: Witness yourself doing your job, the way your body is reacting, and your thoughts as you would look at the character of a movie for instance. This can help to calm your mind down and relax your body while staying focused.

6. Take a walk: Sometimes a five-minute break to take a stroll might be helpful in clearing the clutter of thoughts that could lead to panic. This can also help to organize your further approach in order to meet the deadline.

7. Don’t keep watching the watch: Doing so won’t automatically stop the time. Divide your time slots and set an alarm after particular intervals of time so that you can keep a track of it as well.

8. Avoid tea and/or coffee: As helpful as they may seem, these would ultimately fuel deadline panics and high blood pressure problems.

9. Turn things around: Instead of being driven by fear, it is better to focus on what would happen if you do meet the deadline.

10. Reflect: Try remembering the last time you got into a situation like this and the way you handled it. You will have a lot of tried and tested ways to deal with it.

All your mind needs is a convincing story. You just have to tell it the one that helps you complete your task. Once that happens, no one can be a better colleague at work than your mind.

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Source:
Innovation Chasers Blog/