Time.  It's merciless no matter who you are.  It won't stop, it won't slow down, it won't give you any kind of break at all.  For those of us who operate under strict time deadlines, it gets even worse.  Whether you're working on visual design, complex code, or anything else with a client on the end of a line waiting for the time to be up, it doesn't make much difference.

A couple days ago, I was working on a client project.  Everything was going great.  I had quoted my time and was flying through my task list in record time.  I set a time when I could take the web site off line to migrate over the changes that I'd made.  As soon as that was done, everything went south.  My database wasn't syncing with the data on the live server.  I had backups, of course, but everything I tried seemed to make matters worse.  And the deadline was the next morning (it was already late at night.) I'd been working on the project all day and could barely see straight I'd been staring at the computer so long.  Eventually, with about 8 hours left to both sleep, and somehow get this job finished, I decided it was time to sleep.  After a few hours, at 4:30 AM, the alarm went off and it was back to SQL queries and shell scripts (and lots of coffee).  My deadline was at 6am when I had to leave the house. With 5 minutes to spare, everything was perfect, my compuer went in it's bag, and I was out the door.

So how did I do it? How do you get the work done before time runs out? You might call it luck, but I call it three things:

1. Confidence

The first thing that will kill you is saying "I can't do it".  My mantra has always been "if he can do it, so can I" I haven't figured out who "He" is yet, but that's irrelevant.  The fact of the matter is, there's always a way.

2. Good Resources

You always want to have as many resources at your disposal as possible.  I keep a shelf full of books on the subjects that I'm working on, and I bookmark any useful information I find on the web.  I don't try to learn it all, I don't try to memorize it all, I just try to remember it's there. If you know it's there, and have a reasonable idea how to find it again, then in your hour of need you've got something to call on.  I'd rather have 10,000 things that I know pretty well or at least know about, then 10 that I know perfectly.  This way when a new problem arises, I'm ready to go.

3. Never give up!

Remember the little engine that could?  It might be a kids story, but it's a valuable lesson.  How about the Tortoise and the Hare? These are childhood lessons that we would all do well not to forget. If you stick with it, you'll get there. If you try enough ways, one of them will work.

Thomas Edison once said "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."

So don't let me stop you, get back to work!