Have you ever postponed a deliverable or delayed a court date because you weren’t ready? Even though you had plenty of lead time? I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard lawyers talk about blowing through internal deadlines because they weren’t “real”. I’d like to ask for a shift on that perspective- any deadline you set in order to ensure that you complete a task is real. There’s no such thing as a fake deadline.

If you have a deliverable with a beginning and an end, it’s a candidate for “projectizing”. What I mean by that is to break the final product into smaller chunks and establish milestones for completing these mini-deliverables. In addition to milestones, you need to block time on your calendar to get the work done.

The only way to be sure you’ll deliver on time is to estimate what work needs to be completed, and when. Establish internal deadlines and manage to them if you want to meet your external deadlines. Take them seriously, the consequences of missing them are all too real!