Deadline jobs

[00dd6419]

How do you deal with deadline jobs?

[6c1072e8 · Accepted solution]

First of all, I try to stay mentally sane. Because when you think too much about the workload and whether you can actually handle it, things can quickly get out of your control, you struggle with sleep at night, always thinking about work, you lose your focus due to the lack of sleep, and it really is a downward spiral from there on. Therefore I learned to accept my limitations, and focus more on effort than the eventual results. What I try to say here is that I will do my best to meet every deadline, working hard and managing my time well. But if it isn’t possible, and I do not meet a deadline, it isn’t the end of the world. Because let’s face it–sometimes the managers' expectations aren’t realistic, or we get different deadlines from different managers and it is simply out of our reach to meet them. In such a case we should communicate the issue with the managers and try our best, but it may happen we won’t meet one of the deadlines, and it is important to accept that. At least this is the way I see it.

[data_divas]

Only take jobs that have deadlines if you can meet the stated deadline, that's really the only way to deal with them.  If you can't meet the deadline do not take the job, make sure you are aware of any pending deadlines for the project before you are hired, make sure you ask what the deadline is if any and turn down any you cannot meet.  It's pretty simple.

[clarissajaneen]

Do your best to get expereince under your belt and give yourself way more time than you think you'll need to finish so you can figure out how long the work takes you to do. Then you can get a better idea of how much time you can budget for similar projects. (Ex: I can realistically edit 50 pages a week) If possible, you can also propose a sample work to get an idea of how long the full project will take you. Since I'm an editor, I usually offer to sample edit a chapter or two for a small fee, to give me an idea of the full work.