How To Set Your Own Due Dates

Do you struggle to keep to your writing or project due dates?
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In today’s episode, I discuss the common problems academics have with setting and meeting due dates. Then, I outline how to set due dates more effectively. By building confidence around these skills, you will get better at setting due dates based on facts and data, not just when you want to turn something in.
I encourage you to take the time to reflect on your writing practice. Think about the areas you can develop and get better at in the New Year. Tune in to learn the tools you need to set a due date and get the satisfaction of achieving it.
Problems You Have with Setting Due Dates
If you set due dates based on personal or internal factors, you won’t fool yourself into believing there are consequences to missing them. We tend to honor external due dates much more. However, shifting that mindset and giving internal due dates the same weight as external ones is important.
The second problem is that you might not know how to set due dates. You make them based on hopes and dreams, not data or facts. Let’s stop setting due dates based on random things and instead make dates you can meet.
Leveraging Writing Facts & Data to Set Due Dates
In the Navigate program, we do exercises to collect data on how long it takes to complete a writing task. Similar to journaling, these observations help you become more accurate at predicting your writing speed. While our instinct is to be as fast as possible, it is more important that you know how long it really takes for you to write.
Facts are writing sessions you have scheduled on your calendar. Instead of looking at how long you have to complete a project, think of how many writing sessions you can schedule between now and the due date. An essential component is learning your most optimal writing time and holding boundaries around your writing time.
There is a difference between tasks and problems. You can get better at writing tasks, but writing problems is the actual act of writing. Those issues need space, and the project management approach is different.
“The first problem with setting your own due dates is that you are just a little too smart for that. What I mean is that you can put a deadline on something but it is an internally set deadline or a personally set deadline, you are not fooling yourself into believing there is any consequence in not hitting the deadline.”
“Everyone wants to be fast. And sometimes we set due dates out of this desire to be fast, but fast is relative and not very helpful as a goal. Instead, you want to be accurate in predicting how long it is going to take you to do something. At least roughly know how long, how fast you are. The only important speed is your speed.”
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- Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Apply here!
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