How To Ask For Deadline Extension Without Losing Credibility?

When many deadlines are approaching, you would probably feel the pressure since there are too many things you need to finish within a limited time frame. Standing among piles of work and knowing that it is highly likely that you could not complete everything before the due time.

So you have no other way but to ask for postponing the deadline, but how to do it in a way that could still maintain your credibility and reputation?

Many students as well as employees are facing this problem. Even though your teacher or your boss is not happy when you want to extend the deadline, however, many will still give you more time to complete the work. Of course, you definitely need to know how to say it in a subtle yet effective way. Your teacher/boss's attitude and feedback, as well as your credibility, will depend on how you communicate this with them. In order to have more time for yourself to generate the best result as well as to retain your personal prestige, please refer to the four effective ways below:

1. Do not allow yourself to delay deadlines that others in your group have to follow

There are cases that whether you have extra days to finish the job or not is not really important as it does not affect the total result (of the team). However, there will be times when delaying the deadlines will cause you a lot of trouble. For example, when you have not yet completed the first phase of the project, then your colleagues can not continue the next stage. Therefore, in this case, if you just explained briefly, "I cannot keep up with the project and so I need more time to finish," this would certainly make your co-worker become angry.

In some cases, how you inform your colleague about your late progress may generate different reactions and results

Instead of giving out the message as the default and everyone should follow, you should anticipate if you need more time and ask everyone in your group subtly: "Does the time for this work can vary a bit? Or, for example, your deadline is on the 15th, you can ask, "Day 15 is to complete all or can we finish it on some day in the middle of the month?" The latter questions will make things softer, not too rigid and stressful.

2. Give a reasonable new deadline

Suppose you need in total 24 hours to complete the work so you plan to send an email asking for another 24 hours to complete. After that 24 hours, you still need another day to try to give out the best results for your work, and then ... you continue to email to delay it for one more day. You might think everything is fine, however, this approach will not be good for you in long term as it can affect your reputation and relationship with your colleagues. In this way, you are just telling others that job delay for you is something that happens every day and it is no big deal.

In addition, sending mail continuously with the same content about your delay will make the recipient feel quite annoyed and tired of you.

So, once you need a new deadline for your work, be very careful to make a reasonable time and not rush for yourself. Consider the time it takes to get things done, limiting short deadlines and then ending up sabotaging your progress.

3. Do not wait until the deadline is near to extend it.

Waiting for the next day to review the deadline would show a sign of unprofessionalism to your boss and colleagues around. On the other day, you had better confess to your boss or colleagues that you cannot keep up with the project based on the schedule and then ask if they can give you more time to complete.

For the new colleagues who just collaborate with you for the first time, you could try asking them to have a look at the work you did and receive feedback from them. In this way, you will have more time for yourself to finish the rest of the work and still not cause any annoyance to others.

4. Limit this situation to continue

If you have more time allowed either by your boss or colleague to complete the task, try your best to complete the deadline. Set yourself priorities that need to be completed first, step by step so that you would not repeat unnecessary tasks. Be serious with deadlines so you do not get stressed out the next time and take control in everything.