When I was on a virtual call the other day with a bunch of business owners, everybody in the group had a revelation about setting a deadline. What came out of that session was that we’d all had major projects and things that we were trying to get done. As people were sharing about those things and how they were going about doing them, we all agreed that in order to accomplish great things and get work done, we all were using a “deadline.” A deadline is a “has to be done by” this date or time — without a shadow of a doubt; there’s no overtime for the project. What we all discussed and discovered is that deadlines are actually our friends!

Deadlines helped each one of us to achieve things that we previously hadn’t been able to achieve. By enforcing a deadline, then using that as a way to produce work to get projects done or to move the ball forward, we had all had great success because of the deadline.

So as a tip for you as a business owner or CEO — are you using deadlines in a positive way?

A lot of times we look at deadlines and dread them. We look at them as a negative; but actually a deadline is a great assist!. It’s like a big push for you to get up the mountain to reach the top.

You should also realize that as a business owner, an entrepreneur or CEO, a deadline actually stimulates creativity. Deadlines stimulate your ability to work and be more focused. You can really use this as a great tool in your business.

Right now if you don’t have any hard deadlines for projects or things that you want to achieve, (maybe goals or dreams that you have), I encourage you today to sit down and give yourself two or three really strong deadlines on things that you want to achieve within your business. Then report to us the results. We are starting an accountability group of people that use deadlines and who want to make a huge leap or see huge progress in their business. We’re all finding as the deadline draws closer, even though we may have a lot of things that have to happen, having the deadline helps us to achieve things and ramp up to get things done.

So, you see, deadlines are our friend! I would encourage you to use deadlines in your business, your personal life and with your employees too. Let us know how the deadlines are working for you. I challenge you to put some really hard ones in your life. You might be surprised at what you can accomplish with a really good deadline.