Latest / Travel Agency in a Year / Day 268: Trick Yourself Into Getting More Done - The Psychology of Deadlines
Transcript
- Rachel: Welcome back to the Travel Agency in a Year podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Kay. I am also a travel agency owner, and I want to see all of us go well past that hundred K commission everyone says is a dream. It's not. It's the first stepping stone. Let's get you closer to seven figures in commissions. Join me. Join me. if you're like, wait a minute, how can you help me with that? I don't know if I can help you with that, but I'm here to cheer you on. The podcast is free ninety-nine. Subscribe. Daily episodes dropped. Once this podcast is finished, because it is three hundred and sixty-five episodes and we are less than a hundred days left. I will have another podcast. Don't you worry about it. Also, you can head to elevatewithrachelk.com to see how I can help you. I have a quarterly, quarterly 12-month program with signups opening up quarterly, and I also offer 12-week custom mentoring. Limited spots on both. Too bad, so sad. Any if you missed it. all right, today is day 268. Tricking yourself into getting more done. The psychocology of deadlines. Mmm, I love I love giving this advice to travel agents when they're like, I can't seem to get anything done. Deadlines have a bit of a bad rip. They can feel really stressful, they can feel imposed, they can feel uncomfortable. And there's a lot of research showing that deadlines, if you use them well, are one of the most effective tools available for actually getting things done. Parkinson's Law. I think I've talked about this in the podcast before. by writer C. Northcote Parkinson in the nineteen fifty. Yep, I have mentioned this. In n in the nineteen fifty. In the nineteen fifty. In the nineteen fifties. I have talked about this in past episodes, so a little refresher in case you're like, what are you talking about? Your work expands to fill the time available for its completion. If you give yourself a full month to build a proposal, it will somehow take the entire month, even if the actual work only required is a few focused hours. This is not some neuro spicy ADHD thing. This is Parkinson's law. Give yourself two days instead to do the same task, and magically it gets done in two days at a similar similar level of quality. The task itself didn't get eight times smaller. Your relationship to the available time simply changed, and you became more productive. Because, yes, it does tie into like any kind of ADHD, ADD stuff as well. you procrastinate and that's fine. But if you don't allow yourself to procrastinate, you're gonna get it done. And then you don't have time to sit and mull over whether or not it's good enough. You just get it done. Okay. Now research on self-imposed deadlines. This is from I can't say their names, Dan Arieli and Klaus Wartenbruck. Published in the Journal of Psychological Science. They examined this, the self-imposed deadlines, across several experiments, and they found that people are genuinely willing to set meaningful, even costly, deadlines for themselves, specifically to control their own procrastination, and that those self-imposed deadlines do measurably help improve performance and reduce procrastination compared to having no deadline structure at all. And I get it, Rachel, deadlines make me anxious. We don't want that to happen. Okay. The research also found that self-imposed deadlines, while helpful, were genuinely not as effective as externally imposed, evenly spaced deadlines set by someone else. Okay? In other words, a deadline that someone else holds you to, a client expecting a proposal within a specific date, an accountability partner checking in. Do you have all your content posted for the week or your content calendar done for the month? A launch date that you have posted. Publicly announced, those tend to produce even stronger results than a private deadline you've only set for yourself and could quietly move if you wanted to, because we all know, like, I mean, this could be a tomorrow problem when you're having a rough day. But if you make that covenant with your clients or with your audience to generate new clientele, Or with a colleague, you're making that promise. If you didn't listen to yesterday's episode, we talked about the the client as the hero, the challenge of the covenant, and you are the guide for the hero. So you gotta make good on your promises. Okay? And again, you have well for me, I tend to have less anxiety when I set that expectation with my clients because I get it, setting a deadline and you're like, I don't have this done. And you have an issue with giving yourself grace for not doing things perfectly or not getting it done in a timely manner manner, if you set it and make this promise to someone else. especially if you're acting as like a steward in your business, I found that you're more likely to just do it and be less anxious about it. Rather than putting all the pressure on yourself and this business is gonna fail without you. But if you're if you're thinking of this as like stewardship and practice to like God put you in place to run this travel agency or the universe, whatever you may believe in. But God puts you in place to be a steward for this business and to be a steward for the hero. God's like, you are Gandalf the Gray right now. Here's your Bilbo. You know? Then you're more likely to be like, okay, this is just an assignment I need to get done. Instead of being like, I'm never going to be good enough. And you're going to do it, you're going to do it as well as you can. All right. So, first, self-imposed deadlines are genuinely worth using. Set them deliberately, make them specific and real, not vague. This is also why I highly recommend joining the Success Circle. We open up 20 spots each quarter. So the next time. What? it's coming up. I feel like we're in it. So, what day is it today? Sorry. I'm on day 267, I believe. Let me look at my notes. batching this content. Bop bup 268. Sorry, day two hundred and sixty eight in the year. Okay, two hundred sixty eighth day of the year. September twenty fifth. So at the time that this episode airs, y you may still have time if spots are available to start October first. And there's a lot of countabilli buddies that you're stuck with. Present company included. So I will harass you. I'm not that bad. Mm-hmm. Anyway, you can also sign up or apply for one-on-one mentoring because I do give assignments. I'm like, you get this done, you better get this done. Okay. All right. If you set yourself in posed posed deadlines deliberately, make them specific and real, not vague. Not I'm gonna work on this sometime this week. That barely functions as a deadline at all. Having that in your head or writing it on an envelope, I know you do that. But if you have it on your calendar and like written down on your to-do list, this proposal is done by Wednesday at noon. That is a good self-imposed, why do I say imposed? Imposed deadline. Secondly, and more powerfully, build in the external accountability whenever you can. Announce a launch date publicly, the way that we've discussed back on day 223 of the Travel Agency New Year podcast. Rather than keeping it private and flexible. Tell a mastermind group. I don't know, maybe the success circle if you're in it. Or an accountability partner that you have this specific deadline rather than just noting it in your own planner where only you will ever know if it actually slips or not. And also, if you set a date to something and you announce it to more than yourself, you're probably gonna get it done right now. If you promise proposals within 72 hours of starting work with a client, right? This is just an example. Like the first proposal within seventy-two hours. You can set your own deadline of like this is it on my free time tomorrow. You can put it on your calendar tomorrow to start that research if or the day after they like sign your TNCs and give you the information. Do not start any proposals until they've actually agreed to work with you in writing. Don't just be like, well, they said they'd paid my fee. I better start researching. Ugh, I've seen too many agents do that too. Anyway. Alright, a few productivity tactics that can build on this. So if you space their spaced and evenly distributed deadlines, those beat one big deadline at the end. So that Arielli and Wharton Brock, whatever, Wharton Brock research specifically found that people who spread spaced out several spaced out several smaller deadlines across a project performed better than those who set single deadlines at the very end. Which a lot of you I know do. With with like your automations and things like that. And you should just have that pretty well ready to go. Why aren't you doing it with your marketing? Why aren't what? What? Why don't you make that the same thing in all the systems in your business? Why aren't you setting aside money for your taxes on a weekly basis and then filing your quarterly taxes? But you got all your automations. Hmm, interesting. Interesting. I want you to think about that. Maybe you are doing it all and I'm just being I don't know. Is it assumptive or presumptive? Alright, anyway. People, this research that they did, they found that people who spaced it out on a big project, small little deadlines along the way perform better than having one big deadline at the end, like a hundred trips. Like I want to book a hundred trips between now and the end of wave season next year. If you space it out and be like, I have to hit twenty consultations this month to be able to close fifteen or whatever, twelve trips, and then I'm that much closer to hitting my goal. You're gonna perform a lot better instead of thinking, I'm gonna make a hundred and fifty thousand this next year and having no smaller deadlines to follow. Alright, time boxing. Time blocking. Give yourself a specific limited window, even if it's an artificially shorter one, rather than leaving it open ended with your goals. This deliberately invokes Parkinson's law in your favor. And I have nearly shoved it down agents' throats in the past and be like, you're gonna get this done by this day, and then they're like, Wow, it worked, I did it. It's just it's a law for a reason, like the law of gravity. Okay? It's not a theory. It's not a framework I just made up to try to sell you something. It is a law. public commitment when you can, whenever a task allows it, tell someone else your exact deadline. And this is like the same thing like with any goals in your life. Don't be afraid to share your goals and your deadline to achieve things. It doesn't mean you're gonna hit it and it doesn't mean you're failure. And absolutely if anyone that you tell is like, you didn't hit your goals, what a loser, get them out of your life. Anyway, that mild social accountability that this creates if you tell somebody this is my goal, and this is why if you are in the success circle, I'm like, what's your Dululu goal for next year? Because I really want to see all of you hit those Dululu goals, and I'm gonna be subtly reminding you throughout next year. Are you marketing? Are you? Because that's like the biggest obstacle. And it's the fastest way to hit your revenue goals. Market, close those sales. Done. Anyway. That social accountability increases follow-through because you have someone else, not necessarily if it's a client rely on you, great, but if there's somebody else that's being accountable, like they're gonna see you and you aren't making that covenant with them. I don't know why I'm karate chopping these last few episodes. I think it's time for a break. So quick recap: Parkinson's Law, not Parkinson's disease, Parkinson's Law. Work expands to fill the time you give it. So give important tasks to help you move the needle in the revenue of your business less time on purpose. Set specific, real self-imposed deadlines, put them on your calendar. Strengthen them further with genuine external accountability. Wherever possible. I know there are some things that you're like, I probably shouldn't share this with anyone. And it doesn't hurt. Just make sure whoever you share it with is actually cheering you on and not gonna be like sending that negative energy your way because that's never fun. Break large projects into several smaller space deadlines rather than one big deadline at the end. You want to book a hundred trips this next wave season. You're not gonna hit a hundred trips if that's if you're like, yeah, by the end of March next year, I'm gonna book a hundred trips. No big deal. That's not gonna get you if you don't break it down into smaller steps you can start taking today. You're not gonna hit that goal. Period, end of story. Alright, tomorrow we are going to bring this energy in reviewing your service packages. If you charge fees, I highly recommend having tiered service packages. And so that's what we're going to talk about. If you have zero inclination to ever charge a fee, skip tomorrow. Otherwise, have a wonderful day.