For example, let’s look at what so many of us do so frequently as entrepreneurs, and I’m definitely including myself.
This, for example, we tell ourselves we must launch by Friday or some date we must post daily on social media, and we must hit that goal by the end of the month.
Otherwise it’s deemed a failure. But why? Who said so? And it’s just getting silly because most of the time these deadlines are, well, completely made-up.
Like literally a date plucked from thin air.
And we we see the same compliance, right? Everything a client needs is somehow urgent and they must do something by a certain date.
But then as we’re doing it, as we’re busting our asses, they get super busy doing a million other things that they must be doing.
And the project then gets delayed but with 0 consequences for the delay other than them somehow getting annoyed with us from missing a deadline that they didn’t get back to us on.
So it’s all very crazy. And these dates are literally just random.
Most of the time.
What we’re doing is creating fake urgency. We are forcing pressure on ourselves and then wonder why we’re burnt out and we’re stressed and we’re delivering super work.
So we used to take a step back and we used to ask ourselves like, why are we creating these deadlines?
And whenever we are creating deadlines, we need to ask, is this really that urgent? Or was it just some bullshit pressure that we’ve invented?
And I want to address some of these daily pressures that we put on ourselves as I know that I am totally guilty of it.
So I just took some time off this summer because I got married. And so yeah, that took a lot of organizing time and there was a lot of stress.
And have a guess why there was stress?
Well, several factors which I’m not going to go into this blog card, but of course there was one huge deadline to hit my wedding day.
And do you know what? Another classic thing about deadlines. We always worry about so many things that don’t even matter.
Now, I was obviously stressed about so many things for the big day and then on the day, none of those things didn’t even matter.
The day went great despite other things going wrong and I just didn’t need half of that stress.
So naturally after this time, I took some time off. I had a great honeymoon and I had some fantastic quality time with my husband and I just wanted to take a break.
So obviously I paused work and I genuinely took a break, which was amazing by the way, if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re not taking a real break in a while, for me it was 10 years.
I recommend doing it highly, you know, So I’m obviously come back now and I’m back to work, but in my head, I decided that I was going to make my big comeback on the 1st of September.
I decided that my new website will be ready, I’d have a full content marketing plan ready and I’d be full on posting this content all over social media and I’d just be like ready to beast it.
And why did I pick that date? Well it was end of summer so it was a logical time I thought.
I just took my break. It was a start of an academic year so it’s a good time to reset.
It was the 1st of the month and it was a Monday. It literally could not be more perfect.
But it was the end of August and I felt the stress and the pressure building up.
So many things had gone wrong and there were insane delays with my website. And I was like, Oh my God, it’s not going to be up on time.
And everything else I’ve planned for that is not going to work because the website has to be up before the other content goes out.
And just then more things went wrong and then client stuff came up and that stressed me out more and I had to rush some other bits of the website saying I didn’t think things free because I was rushing.
I made little mistakes there.
And, you know, then this obviously stressed out the team and then other key members of the team were away.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
There were loads of things. So what did I do? I stressed out. I was like, Oh my God, we’re going to miss this deadline.
The world’s over.
I mean, not quite that drastic, but I was stressed. I gave up my weekends to try and make this deadline. And I overworked.
And I’m tried to make sure that like, I delivered all my client stuff too, and I’m making sure that I wasn’t slacking there.
So therefore I was spending extra time there. They take it slow because I was extra stress on my website and I just spent all my time working. So that was a great way to start marriage, right?
Luckily, I have an incredibly supportive husband and he doesn’t listen to his podcast, so he listens to me enough in the day today.
So obviously I can say what I like. But yeah, it was not a good start. And today is what, the 15th of September when this is coming out and guess what?
My website is done, but what have I lost? My website being delayed two weeks. So two weeks of revenue maybe.
But do you know what? That’s just delayed revenue because I believe that if there was work coming in for that, it’s still going to come in, it’s just going to be a bit delayed.
And you know, OK, so I haven’t done anything in my content calendar yet. I haven’t posted any of the stuff I wanted to post on any other social media channels.
And so I’ve not done those because the website isn’t up.
And so it seems like a complete failure, right?
But then I’m like, why is it a failure?
Because I missed this deadline. But did I really miss a deadline? Or did I just pick a random date?
Because it seemed good, but actually had zero logic to it. And well, not zero logic.
I explained all the reasons, but it was just a very pretty date from the from how it looked and it just seemed so power fact.
But was there actually a financial or business reason that this had to be all done by the 1st of September?
Probably not.
I’m sitting here 2 weeks later and the website is still not up. Am I stressed?
Yeah, if I’m being honest, maybe a little bit.
But I know I’m, I’m OK. I’m OK.
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not willing to sit around for ages until it eventually happens because everyone else is just going to also delay it and they’re going to do other things.
I thought I actually started this site back in November 2024. When I looked at my notes, when I wrote all the docs and the content, I was like, Oh my God, so much.
This is really outdated and it’s not been done because I’ve prioritized everything else in my life.
I obviously clients always come first and obviously have a lot of stuff going on, marriage and all that stuff, you know?
And so I prioritize everything else, you know. So deadlines are important, but it’s the arbitrary ones that cause more harm than good.
So that’s what I want to speak about because yes, my website should be up and hopefully fingers crossed it’s up this week because you know, it’s almost there and we’re going to start with hold done is better than perfect.
Then that’s another story for the other day. I’ll talk about these arbitrary deadlines, things like we must post every day on social media because consistency is the key.
How many times have you seen that on social? And I mean today because you’ve probably seen it multiple times today, right?
I am constantly hearing people moaning about this stuff. They’re saying if I don’t post today the algorithm’s going to punish me or if I miss just one day then this is going to completely mess up everything and all my hard work for the past few weeks have been gone. Like this is honestly what people believe, but all of it’s bullshit.
You’re believing what the social media gurus tell you because it benefits them if you believe it.
You follow them for their tips on the algorithm, and then you absorb their content about how consistency is key. And then suddenly you feel overwhelmed with the amount of work that you have to do to be able to compete.
And so then you feel like that the only solution is to get these experts to help you. Well, that’s happened.
Congratulations, you just got manipulated into taking out their services because at the end of the day, everything in business should come down to ROI.
Are you getting a positive ROI from the time on social media?
If so, then keep doing it. But if not, you either refine your strategy or you shift your attention to what actually does make you money.
And as I said, I see all the time with clients, right? We’ve had plenty of clients who tell us just how urgent a project is and they’re so adamant about it.
And because you know you want to offer a good service, you bust your arse for them. You drop everything, you do your own items, you get your team to work overtime hours and then they disappear for months.
That life or death urgent project, well, it often gets abandoned and they’ve moved on to the next urgent thing and then we have to battle to get paid.
PS Don’t start an agency anyway, the bottom line is people say everything is urgent and almost nothing is.