If you’re anything like the ambitious business owners I work with—or let’s be real, like me—you’re constantly setting deadlines for yourself that would make a Navy SEAL flinch. Launch the new service in two weeks? Sure. Reorganize the entire ops structure by the end of month? Why not? Train your team, build a new onboarding process, fix your tech stack, and write a client proposal… all before lunch? Easy.

Until it isn’t.

Let’s get something straight right off the bat: you’re not behind—you just set a deadline that made no sense in the first place.

Here’s the kicker: no one actually told you to do all of this right now. There’s no boss breathing down our necks. There’s no corporate review meeting looming. It’s just… you; creating pressure, manufacturing urgency, building little anxiety bombs with ticking clocks.

So where do these deadlines even come from? We’ve internalized the idea that in order to be successful, we must be fast. That if we slow down, someone else will outpace us. That rest is a luxury and pausing is failure. So we set impossible goals and then beat ourselves up when we don’t hit them. And this can cost us more than we think.

The issue isn’t just missing a self-imposed goal. The issue is what it does to your energy, your mindset, and your team. You sacrifice quality for speed. You create burnout—not just for you, but for your employees. You start to resent the work, even the parts you used to love. You forget why you started in the first place. And the worst part? You start to see yourself as someone who doesn’t follow through. Not because you’re undisciplined. Because your timeline was built on fantasy, not reality.

Here’s an idea: what if your timeline wasn’t the problem, it was the story you told yourself about what “should” happen and by when? When I work with clients, one of the first things we tackle is expectations. Not just what needs to get done—but what really needs to get done right now. What can wait. What can be delegated. What you’ve convinced yourself is urgent, but isn’t.

Spoiler alert: most things aren’t on fire. They just feel that way because we made the timeline up in our heads.

How do you stop the cycle? Here are three things you can try right now to reset your relationship with time:

Gut check your deadlines.
Ask yourself: “Who said this has to be done by Friday?” If the answer is just “me,” ask again: “Why?”
Build in breathing room.
Whatever timeline you’re thinking… double it. Seriously. If it takes less time, you’ll feel like a rockstar. If it takes more, you won’t be in panic mode.
Celebrate progress, not perfection.
Just because the project isn’t done doesn’t mean you haven’t moved the needle. A win is a win, even if it’s a baby step.

Unrealistic deadlines aren’t a productivity hack. They’re a recipe for resentment and burnout. You don’t need to go faster—you need to go smarter. There’s no medal for running yourself into the ground. But there is joy, freedom, and sustainability in building a business that works with your life, not against it.

And that starts with giving yourself a break. Literally and figuratively.

Want help sorting the chaos and setting smarter timelines that won’t destroy your sanity? Let’s talk. My job is helping business owners like you build systems that don’t depend on superhuman energy.