Make Sure You Have A Deadline

Apart from the work you do for your studies or job, you might have plans for a project on the side. Maybe you want to learn how to surf, play guitar or organize an event. But there is a lot of work to be done and you don’t want to spend every night working too. So your new plans seem less important, you might even forget about them at times, and you keep on postponing the required actions to make it work.

An example could be John, a graduate student who wants to start a band. He plays the bass and sings, and he already knows what kind of music he wants to play, and that he wants to take it serious and perform live on stage a lot. John is dreaming about this for a long time, and he doesn’t want to wait any longer.

He already started to write some songs, but finding the extra band members, at least a drummer and a guitar player, seems like such a dauting task to him that he stays in this situation for a long time, knowing what to do but not knowing where to start or who to ask for help. What advice could we give John?

The reason he does not want to start looking for places to perform is because he thinks he should form a band first, write songs, practice a lot an then start looking for venues and festivals to play live. But why not turn things around? He definitely needs some pressure from outside to push him become active and get things started. Do do this I would advice John to first look for a venue and date to set his first performance. Make it not too big, just a nice place to start, like a school party.

Suddenly there is a pressure from outside. John realizes he needs to speed up the process now to form his band, write some songs together and practice a lot, because he knows he wants people to be amazed by their first performance! There is no time to waste, and if he finds out it’s really impossible to find the right people, he will have to find an alternative solution.

When you do something without a deadline you can set one yourself. But when you do this, it’s very easy to postpone it (a thing that should not happen to deadlines). When you are the only person who knows about this deadline there are no specific consequence connected to it. So avoid this by talking to other people about it and, even better, create expectations. They will definitely motivate you and get you started as soon as possible. And if something you planned turns out to be impossible you will definitely have to use your creativity and look for possible solutions.

Photo by PPDIGITAL