Nobody likes deadlines. Absolutely no one. They’re a looming source of pressure and stress which gets worse and worse as time passes. But they’re important for almost any task and any role, and they’re essential for the smooth running of your company or organization. In the case of my internship it was pretty awful. Again I understand why they’re in place but it was so stressful. As stressful as it was, I began to appreciate deadlines more and more. Deadlines have many jobs: To ensure that we complete our work. It’s easy to delay or to forget a task that has no agreed end point. Deadlines help to avoid this.

Deadlines also encourage a smooth flow of work and help us to collaborate toward achieving a shared goal, and to keep complex, multistage projects on track.