We've all had them. We need this feature done by so and so date. We need to ship this by the end of the month. Your assignments are due in a week. Often we deal with things that are required to be done and the due dates are beyond our control. And we all dread them.
Yet the more I talk to people about how they got something done for their own personal use, the more it seems that setting your own due dates becomes a good idea. The very thing that we all dread becomes very powerful for getting something done or wanting to do something. This is something that I didn't realise that I was actually doing when I decided to read the Bible front to back in a year. I set myself out to read the Bible in a year after for time and time again that I've been hearing that you can do so from the pastors at my other church. And so I did. I didn't quite finish it in a year but it was pretty close.
The point is that setting yourself a due date and committing to that can have great results. I've asked a colleague how he decided to get his tattoos. He said that he saw a design that he like to have as a tattoo but he decided that he was going to wait for a year and if he still liked the design as a tattoo that he would like to have then he will get it. Sure enough, after a year, he still liked the design and got the tattoo. He did the same thing for his second tattoo only he waited 18 months before he could decide. He never regretted any of them.
This only serves to validate some of my decisions for this year. As this year is a fairly significant year for me with lots of plans in conjunction with this year, I will wait until the year is over. If I still like the plans when I revisit them at the end of the year, I will commit to that. It will cover everything from getting myself something nice all the way up to church ministry. I think it also helps you learn to make the decision, as the song goes "Let it go", and take the consequences of those decisions. Once you have ruminated on something for sometime, it removes the impulse of having to make that decision and weighs up on the pros and cons. But at some point, a decision needs to be made and what better way to GSD than to set a due date. And you stick with it, for all the good and bad that comes with it.
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