In school, some kids who haven’t started their assignments freak out the night before it’s due. But you don’t need to do that.

You can plan it out weeks in advance and gotten things done the smart way ... or you can be just as unprepared as everybody else, but use it effectively.

Instead of letting the pressure to pull a last-minute assignment out of the hat get to you, used that pressure. Pressure is a fuel, and if you embrace it rather than letting it get you emotional, you can put things off to the last minute and still do a good job, harnessing the energy that pressure builds up.

When you’re working on something without a sense of urgency and pressure, you’re usually stopping to check email or chat with the guy in the next cubicle in the process. When pressure kicks in, so does a great deal of focus and a degree of tunnel-vision that prevents you from getting distracted by unimportant things.

So how can you use pressure to get more done without freaking out? It’s really simple: trust your mind.

Trust your mind to cope with the pressure and know that you’ll deliver what is needed, given the right amount of time. Trust pressure to kick in at the right time; if it kicks in too late, there’s a good chance you’ve mentally underestimated the time the task will take to complete. Dissect the work in advance so you have an accurate estimate of the time it’ll take to complete and the requisite sense of pressure will kick in when it needs to kick in.

This isn’t always the best way to work. But it comes in handy for work that you need extra motivation for -- things you really don’t feel like doing, like doing the dishes (invite some guests over and see how this works!)