October 21, 2019
Why You should have Deadlines
When you set up a deadline and work towards it, an almost magical thing happens: your book gets done. It’s as simple as that. Deadlines help you to break down your yearbook publication into more manageable pieces. This allows you to focus on different aspects of the yearbook, provides purpose and motivation and helps to manage your staff and stress levels.
Did you know that deadlines don’t just keep you on track? They also help to keep production at the plant running smoothly. Each year at the plant we have 80,000+ pages to process before spring deliveries, and another 60,000+ pages before fall. Plus 1000+ covers and 2000+ endsheet pages to process. When you complete a submission on time your pages flow into the plant and it ensures we can dedicate the time necessary to review each page. Ultimately, our ability to meet your desired delivery will be based on when your pages arrive at Friesens.
Work with your consultant to create deadlines that will realistically work with your schedule and desired delivery date. When setting these dates make sure to note if your deadlines will coincide with holidays, exams or special events.
To help meet your plant deadlines try setting mini-deadlines for your yearbook staff. Implement rewards for meeting those deadlines and penalties for failing to. By setting mini-deadlines it provides you with some wiggle room for those inevitable late submissions, by people who are not as motivated to meet a deadline. It also allows you the time to do a detailed review before you send your pages off to the plant.
When deadlines are met, give the staff and yourself some much deserved time off or even plan a small celebration. This little reward will be the lift that you and your yearbook staff need before you move on to the next deadline.
You will find that once you start implementing deadlines, your process of creating your book gets easier. Good planning and meeting deadlines gets your book done on time and allows you to sleep at night!