Time pressure - Is it bad or good for you?

This is a post that I wrote a while ago and I'm posting it now as I feel it will help some people out. Enjoy and tell me what you thought of it!

Do you know how people say that being really organized and having a good time management will increase your potential for success? It’s true. I have no doubt about it. Tried it, used it, done it and got the results. And it’s always far better to be organized and have a clear map of what your doing and what you want to do in the near future. Did I say “always”? I meant 99% percent of the times. Here’s the remaining 1%.

Usually I’m pretty organized (usually means more than 80% of the time – I’m not perfect you know :) but today was a special day even if I wasn’t organized at all. I mean I had a plan of what I wanted to do today but I woke up feeling a little lazy and not wanting to do all that I’ve wrote on paper the other day. These days happen to me too and I’m sure you had your share of days like this. It’s ok to have some days when you just want to hang around and enjoy a sunrise or watch a TV show etc. But don’t overdo it! Too many days like this could ruin your life and your chances for success. A small percent of laziness is acceptable, but not more.

So, to get back to what I was saying, I woke up, had a good morning brunch and opened my computer. As I looked in my schedule I was feeling a little down because I had a project due tomorrow to make for school and I wasn’t in any hurry to finish it. Then I remembered that I had another project for today (it was an optional one) and I hadn’t done anything for it. So I started surfing the net for information on the top universities in the US, Canada, Europe, and World Top Rankings (that was the assignment). After searching for 45 minutes I found and interesting site that had these rankings and they were organized very well and were updated recently.

So I started searching the site and found what I had to write about. I took some information from the site and added some personal things to it and was pretty pleased with myself and then it hit me. I remembered one of my rules and that was “Always do more than it is asked of you!”. I knew that I could skip this and not abide this rule. After all it was my decision. “No one will ever know” a voice seemed to tell me. But I decided to abide my rule because I was the one in charge not that pesky voice and after all I had the power to do it or not.

And this was one of those moment that don’t look that important, but can set a course of further actions that will either make you or break you. That’s why everything counts. The small things and the not so small ones. They all add up. Knowing this pretty well, as I already gone through this process of having to decide if I do something that looked small or not in the past I knew it was an important decision. So I though and I though some more. Nope! Actually I decided in about 10 seconds that I was going to blow my teacher off of his chair with my project! So I got to work.

I’ve researched some more sites and found more interesting data and added it into my project. Then I thought “The teacher said: Top Universities from US, Canada, Europe, and World Top Rankings. So what if I did more than this. What if I researched Africa, Oceania, The Middle East and Latin America? And even more, what if I also do a distribution by continent and by country (this meant that the universities were in a separate ranking by continents and country and were ranked on how many universities were present in the first 200, 500 and 1 000 from each country and continent). So I started working on that.

Although I was doing my best, I was under a time pressure as it was about 11:30 and I knew it was a lot of work involved, but I pushed on and on. It got 12:30 and I was supposed to leave for school at 13:15 and imagine this: I had to finish the project which meant organizing the date and making the whole thing look nice and appealing. I was unshaved and man would that make a bad impression on my teacher! So I had to shave.

And on top of all that, my printer run out of paper! I could have given up right then and there and some thoughts were going through my head saying “You don’t really have to go to school today.” or “ It’s ok if you don’t finish this, you did your best and that’s all that matters”. But I knew that if I was going to keep my word and abide my personal law I had to go all the way. So I started looking for paper in my campus(as this is were I live currently) and I found a some paper at someone I knew and she was good enough to give me more than I needed. Problem solved.

Then I hurried back to my room and put the finishing touches on my project and modified it until I was more than satisfied with it. Now it was time for printing. Before I started to print I remembered another little rule of mine and it goes like this “Whenever it is in your power to help someone and if it doesn’t interfere too much with your own goals, do it and do it in a great way”. The shorter version of this would be "If it's possible, do it!"

Now, here’s what I mean with “if it doesn’t interfere too much with your own goals”: I love helping people, but I know that sometimes I can’t help them because it will involve time and effort and I won’t be able to finish my own work in time. I think this is just life and you might have gone through this too. Maybe you also had moments when you really wanted to help someone but if you did that would have meant that you could not complete what you were doing. It’s a hard decision but we all have to take it now and then.

But this time, it was in my power to help some people out so I didn’t think twice. In this case, I could help two of my colleagues by putting their names besides mine as the authors of this project and I did it. I didn’t do this for any thank you or something like that. I just did it because I had the power to do it. And I’m only telling you this to give you some ideas of what you can also do to help others. I hope it helps you :)

So anyway, I did that and I finished the project and then I started printing it. And then I remembered I was still unshaved! So while my printer was doing it’s job I ran to the bathroom and I did a “superman type shave” :) (I mean I was all shaved up in less than 3 minutes on the clock and without any cuts either – my personal best until now, but who knows :)) So I finished shaving and got back to my printer which was still doing her job. Yes, it was still printing because it had a lot of pages to print. I forget to tell you something important. The project was supposed to have about 10-15 pages max. Mine had 55 in the end! So my poor printer had a lot of work ahead!

In the end I was ready and had even 1 minute to spare. The whole thing took me about 3 hours (with the additional two hours of extra work from the moment I decided to abide my rule) but boy was it worth it! And I knew it would be worth it! I knew it was going to be great, not because it was made by me, but because I abide my rules (including helping others) and I didn’t give up and in some strange way I always get unbelievable results whenever I do this. I will write more articles in which I will discuss other examples of great results I got by doing more than what I was supposed to do and some other small secret ingredients (got you curious, didn’t I? :)

After I finished printing the project I got dressed as fast as I could (I’m a pretty fast dresser so it was no problem :) and I headed to school. I walked a little faster and even ran a little bit, but I got there in time even if I was a little wet. But I had made it. No matter how small this may seem to you, for me it was a great thing. I enjoyed it and I know that it strengthened my self confidence and I just took another step towards achieving my goals.

But I didn’t tell you what happened at school, didn’t I? I got there all sweaty but with a big smile on my face and headed towards the teacher and handed him my project. Other colleagues were also doing this so the teacher didn’t see my project then. But then he started going through the projects and reading them briefly and they were all pretty good I guess, good info, though not more than 15 pages long. And then he reached and grabbed my project. I think he said “We have a big one here!” and asked who it belonged to.

I told him that it was me and my colleagues who were the authors and that the project had dealt with what was asked of it and a bit more as it included universities from Asia, Middle East, Africa, Oceania and a distribution by continent and by country. He got very excited about that and after going through it he said “It’s the best project until now and remind me when the day comes, to give you and your team mattes a bonus for this”

I was very happy then and I knew that my work had paid of. And most of all, I had achieved my main goal: I made my teacher happy and blew him off of his chair! Now this is just a little story about how determination and just doing it can do for you. You just have to go ahead and finish the job you have and always do more than what is asked of you and believe me, you will get results, far better results than anyone who doesn’t do this. I really hope that you’ve enjoyed this post which turned into an article and I would love to hear from you.

Was this article helpful in any way or will it help you in the future? Please share your comments. Thank you for sticking with me through the course of this article. Have a more than wonderful day and if it doesn’t start off that way, make it wonderful. Remember, it’s in your power!

I embrace you,
Razvan Dobre

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