Learn and Work Smarter

132. The DO Date Hack that Makes DUE Dates Easy (Micro-Strategy)

• Katie Azevedo • Episode 132

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Most people focus on due dates -- as in, this final deadline. But the due date of a project has nothing to do with you actually getting it done.

Enter the DO date.

In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I make the case that focusing on DO dates is far more effective than wasting our energy stressing about DUE dates. In fact, DO dates make DUE dates just ... happen.

What You Learn:

  • Why focusing on deadlines is the wrong approach
  • What exactly a DO date is
  • How to implement the DO date strategy in your everyday life (work, school, or personal)

🔗 Resources Mentioned:

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Hello there. Welcome to the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm Katie Azevedo, your host. This is episode 132, and today we're talking about due dates. I did get a little tongue in cheek with the title of this episode, the do date hack, spelled D-O, that makes due dates easier, and I thought that was clever. My intention with this episode is for it to be kind of like a quick hit micro strategy episode. Sometimes on this show we talk about mindset and ADHD and the larger ecosystem of skills that make it easy for us or easier for us to learn and work smarter as students and professionals. But today it's gonna be a little different. Like I said, it's gonna be more of a micro strategy, if you will. Who knows? I might intersperse more of these micro strategy episodes into the lineup. We'll see how this one is received. That's the cool thing about having my own show. I can listen to my audience and adjust as I go and do what I want or do what you guys want. Quick reminder before we get started, if you're watching on YouTube, please subscribe. If you're listening in a podcast app like Apple Podcasts or Spotify, be sure to follow the show. And you can also come find me on Instagram at SchoolHabits to stay connected between our Thursday episodes. I love hearing from you guys. Okay, let's begin All right, are you ready to talk about the concept of a due date versus a due date? Now, here is what usually happens. Most of us work with due dates, spelled D-U-E, as in deadlines. I'm gonna have to do a lot on this episode, like spelling them out, um, so that you know which due I'm talking about. But most of us work with the, the deadline due date, okay? And that is the thing that we focus on and we stress about, we worry about. So if you're a student and you've been assigned a project, the first thing we think is, well, when is it due? And maybe you're, you know, you've been asked to present your Q3 report at the office, 'cause you're a working professional, and you think to yourself, well, when is it due? Homework assignments, there's always this emphasis on when is it due. And deadline due dates are important, but today I am making the case that having a do date, spelled D-O, is far more important than a due date, D-U-E. And not only is it more important than the deadline due date, but if you don't have a D-O date, the deadline due date will never happen. Oh my gosh, I should have warmed up my mouth. So let me paint a little picture here. I don't know if you guys know this, many of you do, but I have a private practice. Yes, I do have this podcast and my digital programs and YouTube and my digital side of, you know, my business, but I also have a brick-and-mortar private practice where I work with hundreds of students and professionals a year, thousands over the 20 years that I've been doing this. And I can tell you with certainty that in every single session in my office or, or if we're doing it on Zoom, there is talk of due dates, D-U-E, deadline dates. A kid will come in stressed out that his paper's due the next day. Another kid's panicking 'cause she has, like, a multi-part project due at the end of the week that she hasn't started. Or even too, this happens all the time, like someone might come in on a Tuesday and I'm like, "Oh, what about the research paper that you mentioned last week?" And she'll be like, "Oh, I don't have to work on that because it's not due till Friday. And it always makes me laugh, and this is the exact reason for the topic of today's episode, which is the due date, D-O. The due date hack is a powerful micro strategy for reaching your deadlines. Even for many of the professionals that I coach, depending on their jobs, they'll have a lot of anxiety around deadlines. Like, this is one of the most common topics of conversation in my coaching sessions. But when we focus just on the deadline date, we get more stressed out, we procrastinate, like, another day, we get overwhelmed, and Then we have to complete the things the night before they're due, which lowers the quality of our output, which eventually impacts our grades, our performance, and our reputation. So we can change all of that by focusing instead On the due date, D-O. Let me put this simply. The deadline due date is when you have to turn something in or be done by it. The due date, D-O due date, is the day that you're physically gonna take action on the thing, like when you're going to do it. And when we prioritize when we're gonna work on something, or in some cases the days that we're gonna work on something if it's a complicated project, the deadline due date just takes care of itself. I have a full episode dedicated to how to reach your deadlines without losing your mind. That's episode 124, and that is a comprehensive episode with a lot of strategies for reaching deadlines without going bananas. But honestly, the key strategy behind reaching any deadline at all is taking action. Action is doing. So back to the question, when are you gonna do the thing? And that's what I'm asking you, that's what I'm asking all my students when I work with them. We figure that out first, and then the due date is just met without any drama. Inside SchoolHabits University, I have a whole lesson in the time management module about long-term project management, and I also teach this in the assignment management power system program too as a bonus. And actually in both of those programs, to different degrees, I give students a long-term project planner that helps them figure out what their action due dates are gonna be. Action due dates meaning DO.'Cause as simple as this concept sounds, people who are new to it can sometimes get tripped up on making it happen. But I did promise this was gonna be a micro strategy episode, and so if you want deeper strategies for how to reach your due dates or your deadlines without losing your mind, go check out episode 124. Or obviously, join me inside SchoolHabits University. But here's the gist. Whenever you're assigned something, or if you're a working professional, if you just like have a deadline where something is, is due, that goes on the calendar. That date, it matters. But writing that date or typing that date into a calendar does not make it happen The critical piece is then looking at your calendar and saying, "When am I gonna do this?" Or again, if it's a longer, more complex project, which days am I gonna do this? But I do have to say that something usually happens at this stage with a lot of the people that I work with, whether they're students or they're professionals or in high school or college or graduate school, they're gonna be like,"Okay, the deadline is on the calendar. Like, we got that check mark." And then I direct the conversation to like,"Okay, well let's choose the action due date, the do date, the D-O date. When are we gonna do this?" And often whoever I'm working with might say something like, I don't know, "Wednesday." Not a specific time, but just Wednesday. Without looking at their calendar or checking if Wednesday even is an option, if it even works in the first place. And I can't tell you how many times that that has led to a dead end and a lot of stress because we don't know if Wednesday is a realistic option or a practical DO date, DO, unless you look at your calendar and see that there's time on Wednesday. And also if you can accurately estimate how long your task is gonna take and you determine that, yes, I do have X amount of minutes on Wednesday, and this task is gonna take X amount of minutes. And so I can do it between this time and this time on Wednesday. I checked. Check mark. So what I'm saying here is, if somebody doesn't have a time management system, or at the very least a basic calendar set up that makes their time visible, that makes their time visible in a way that they can look at it and say,"I have a pocket of time on Monday. I have these few pockets of time on Tuesday evening. I have a little bit on Wednesday morning." Whatever it is. If someone doesn't have a time management system or a calendar management system set up that reveals what time is available, how are you ever gonna accurately pick a DO date? D-O. So back to the student who might say like, "I'm gonna work on it Wednesday." We go into the calendar and we realize like, wait, you have four classes on Wednesday, you have a part-time job in the evening, you have that thing happening in the morning, and then you have practice in the afternoon. You literally only have 20 minutes, and you said you were gonna work on this six-page paper. So that DO date is no good. And with no due date, you can't meet your deadline. The point I'm making here is a point I've made many times on this show, which is that none of the skills and systems that we need to learn and work smarter exist in a vacuum. They all work together like an ecosystem. In episode 113, I talked about this ecosystem concept and what the six components of it are. I do honestly suggest you head to that episode when you're done here. I will leave all the links in the show notes in the description box. Again, that's episode 113. Now, it might seem that in this episode I'm only talking about one system, task management, right? Like, you have a task, it's due on Friday, cool. Like, when are you gonna do it? When are you gonna take action on it? And then you do it. That might seem like task management. But what about your time management system? The due date strategy does not work if you don't have a calendar that realistically gives you options and constraints for choosing your due, D-O, dates. It also doesn't work if you don't have a more comprehensive task management system where you have one place that tells you what all of your tasks are so that you can prioritize what you're, what you even need to do. So like, not some tasks in your email and some in your text messages, some in your school portal, some in your DMs, some in your head, some on a sticky note. That doesn't work. That's fragmented. And it's a really silly story when we keep telling ourselves that that kind of system works because it is honestly the people who tell themselves that that system works who are often the most stressed out. So task management and time management are two systems that have to exist independently, but then they also need to sync together. So even this little micro strategy of figuring out when you're gonna do the thing before you worry about when it's due, D-U-E, that can't even exist if you don't have larger systems in place. Does that make sense? So obviously, the ultimate goal is to create functional systems for yourself. Task management, time management, knowledge management, which is like note-taking, organization, which is where you're storing your knowledge, right? Those are all systems, and the ultimate goal is to create those systems to make your life easier. But if you're thinking, "Hold on, Katie, I don't have time to create all of those systems, like, right now, and I do just wanna try this strategy," I do hear you. And so here's what you can do. Look at your to-do list. Hopefully you have one, even if it is on a napkin. What is something coming up? Just one thing that has a deadline. If you're a high school student who just finished their junior year, you're gonna have a lot of college deadlines coming up, obviously, depending when you're listening to this episode. If you're a student in general, I'll bet you could just, you know, have, you have any number of deadlines coming up in the next seven days. Pick one deadline from one class, look at your calendar. Find a specific day and a specific time when you're going to do that thing, when you're gonna take action on it. I have another episode about how to estimate how long tasks take. That's episode 95, time estimation. That's another important strategy to understand here as well, and it can be hard for us, especially for students with ADHD or people with ADHD, but time estimation is a skill that can be learned. But when you're picking your DO date, we try to match how much time you have with the size of the task. If you have a larger project coming up, you might need to look at the week ahead and choose multiple due dates. Again, DO. Maybe you have to work on it on Monday and Thursday, so you check your calendar, you make sure that you have time on Monday and Thursday, and then you actually do it on Monday and Thursday. And when the deadline due date is on Friday, no problem, piece of cake, because you already did it. There really is no magic here. Well, actually, there is. What I really wanna say is one of my favorite expressions. I say this probably in every lesson inside SchoolHabits University, but it's true, and I've said it on the show a lot here before, too. The magic is in the action. In fact, now that I think about it, you know what? I do, I do have a whole episode about this concept. Like, it would be insane if I didn't,'cause it's, like, my favorite concept. It is so simple, but for some reason, so few people think of it this way or do it this way. It's episode 54, the secret ingredient behind every accomplishment ever: action. The magic is in the action. The magic is in the action. Every single thing that we want, every goal we want to achieve, every next level we want to unlock for ourselves, everything we wanna go out and get, everything we wanna be known for, everything is on the other side of taking action. Like, that's all there is to it. The action might be hard, it might be uncomfortable, it might be inconvenient. Maybe, probably, but you still have to take the action. If you don't, you don't get the thing. You don't reach the goal. You don't make the due date. You don't unlock that next level. And that's on you, but so is the power to take action. So this micro strategy, which is to pick a due date, an action date instead of just focusing on the deadline date, which is completely unhelpful, this micro strategy is the core of what I'm always saying, the magic is in the action. And look, I know saying that like,"Build a task management system, a time management system, a knowledge management system," that sounds great, and that sounds really neat and tidy when I say it like that, like just do that. But actually building it out is where I see people freeze or get intimidated. They might start and then two weeks later they abandon the system build-out project because it felt hard or they didn't know if they were doing it right, life happened, all the reasons. But honestly, that is the entire reason that I built SchoolHabits University. In there, I'm not just throwing strategies at you and saying, "Good luck." I walk you through building these systems step by step so that they work by themselves and they work together instead of being, you know, these separate things that you're juggling and getting overwhelmed by. The signature tier of SchoolHabits University gets you 12 months of live coaching calls with me. So when something, you know, falls apart or feels harder than you think it should, and you're like, "Okay, but, like, how does this work for my schedule, for me?" I'm there to help you figure it out. So this taking action thing isn't a whole production every single day. That's the transformation. Because once those systems are in place, picking a due date is almost automatic. Your calendar shows you the time, your to-do list has everything in one spot, and the action, it ha- just happens. No motivation required. if you want to learn more about SchoolHabits University and how to enroll, the link is always in the description box in the show notes, or you can head to schoolhabitsuniversity.com All right, my friends, I know this was a quick episode, but if you like these shorter episodes, let me know. If you like the longer ones, let me know too. You can send me a message on Instagram, I'm @schoolhabits. You can send me a DM over there letting me know your preference. If you guys are on my email list, I send out an email every Thursday with tips and strategies. I think that I link that in the description box in the show notes. I'm not actually sure. I will check that, and I will start linking it, but the point is that you can also reply to any of those emails, and you get me on the other end. No, I don't have a team who does my email, and I don't use AI in my email. It is me, Katie. Share your thoughts and let me know what you think. Remember, your homework, Pick one thing on your to-do list with a due date. Give yourself a DO date. Go get it done so you can say you did it. Keep showing up. Keep doing the hard work. Keep asking the hard questions, and never stop learning

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Katie Azevedo

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