When approaching an important goal or project deadline, you can start early with a small step, or start late with a big one. Choosing the late and big approach often means waiting until the last possible minute to try to do everything, perhaps staying up late and sacrificing sleep or other self-care to frantically pull everything together. Conversely, starting early and small means beginning at the earliest possibly opportunity, with a minimal investment of time.

Investing just a few minutes in a project or task well before it needs to be completed can save you a great deal of time and stress in the long run. By taking small steps early on to prepare and make incremental progress leading up to a deadline, not only will you experience more control and less stress, you are much more likely to produce quality work. When waiting until the last minute to begin a project, chances are much higher that the outcome will not be as good, and it might even take more time than if you had taken small steps along the way.

Procrastination is expensive: time, money and quality are just some of the costs often paid for putting things off. If you wait until last minute to begin a project, you might find that you don’t have all of the information or supplies that you need but not enough time to gather them, so you may waste time running around looking for necessary materials or just have to do without something that would have saved you time or improved your work. If you have to stay up late or work excessively long hours to finish a project, fatigue is likely to lead to mistakes and lower quality work. You might have to cut corners when you run out of time.

Breaking goals and projects down into smaller tasks that you start early and work on incrementally will set you up for a much better outcome. If you realize along the way that you need more information, materials or assistance, you will have time to get what you need, and you will be able to deliver higher quality with lower stress.

With the next big goal or deadline that you have coming up, what is the minimal amount of work you could do right now to prepare?

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