In this chapter, we will take a look at what it takes to get things done on time. While managing appointments calendar management or schedule management ensures that you be somewhere at or before a certain time, managing deadlines ensures that you do something at or before a certain time. Deadline management deals with results, especially time sensitive ones.

The concepts covered in this chapter include three forces that come in the way of meeting deadlines—Parkinson's Law, Murphy's Law, and the Student Syndrome—and three strategies to overcome them. Two of these strategies address the human tendencies that delay either the start or the completion of tasks. The third strategy addresses how to identify possible points of failure and to avoid them or recover from them.