The ideal world clashes with reality in harsh, defining ways.

The truth is that even with focus on principles, careful estimation of timelines, effective time management, and assertive expectation management, you will drop deadlines, miss the mark, and not deliver on your promises.

We’ve all done it. Even me, recently.

I took on a project, helping to create the next version of a course I’ve taught many times. Despite having a busy schedule, I took the opportunity, since I was passionate about the course and the students who would take it.

The work started well enough, but then life happened.

A new responsibility at my primary job took much of the energy and time I was counting on for the course development. This meant competing priorities. Unfortunately the nature of my primary job isn’t time-bound, so it’s difficult to limit involvement while maintaining quality of work.

Then the project was delayed by the other team members. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge issue, but I had already committed to another project scheduled to begin after the course development was completed. The delay meant the project would now happen concurrently with the course development, requiring time and energy I didn’t have.

The time pressures combined to cause my work to be behind schedule, rushed, and subpar.

The stress, disappointment, and lost credibility was emotionally devastating, and had a significant effect on future opportunities with the client.

Although my story is unique, many cases of “not delivering” have the same causes and symptoms. Below I analyze the two mistakes I made, how they could have been prevented, and what you can do to recover and prevent this happening to you on the future.

First mistake: Not resetting expectations once the project timelines had changed.

While I do take responsibility for not delivering what I promised, I could have made the project a lot easier on everyone by resetting expectations once the project had become delayed.

Some managers don’t believe that a delay in a project should mean renegotiation of commitments. After all, if a contractor needs 4 weeks, what’s the difference between that time being used 2 weeks from now vs 4 weeks from now?

The fact is, for many contractors, it’s a huge difference. Imagine you’ve scheduled a project to take all of your time in November and be delivered by November 31. You also have a project scheduled to take all of your time in December. You learn that you won’t get a key document you need from someone else on time, it will be two weeks late.

What to you do? There’s no good answer, but the best answer I’ve found is to reset expectations. Tell the owner of the project, “I understand there’s been a delay. Unfortunately this means we’ll need to reconsider my deadlines, as I had planned on having what I needed on schedule. Let’s renegotiate deadlines.”

Second Mistake, saying yes to too much: At certain points in your life, it’s important to say ‘Yes.’ Especially early in your career, you want to remain open to opportunities.

The downside comes when you say yes to too many things. If you say yes to everything that comes along, you won’t have any space to invest in the next thing.

In my story above, I had said yes to the course development, yes to my job, and yes to another project, even though I knew it would take all of my free time.

Now I’ll apply a stronger filter to my decisions: perhaps borrowing from Derek Sivers (check spelling) “Hell yes or no” mentality.

Recovery is difficult when you under-deliver… when you don’t meet expectations. The trust you had is damaged, perhaps irreparably.

Your first step for recovery is to analyze what you did and don’t do it again. This is all anyone who is extremely reliable and successful has done: made mistakes, learned from them, and improved. Everyone makes the mistake, the reliable ones don’t do it twice.

Make sure you start saying no more often. Make sure you reset expectations on any other projects, even if the reason you have to reset is your fault. Reliable people bring up problems as soon as possible, not at the last possible moment.

Your second step to recovery is to apologize sincerely, and then try to take on another project with the same group that you can over-deliver on. Don’t take it on unless you absolutely know you can do a fantastic job. This will help begin to repair your reputation.

Finally, don’t beat yourself up too much. Everyone has missed at least one deadline. Learn from it, then let go, move on, and focus on what’s next.