What to Do If a Collaborator Always Delivers Late

When someone else's part of a project consistently arrives late, their delay becomes your emergency. You inherit a compressed timeline for your own share of the work, again and again, without ever agreeing to it.

Stop absorbing the slippage silently. Set your internal deadline for their piece a few days before you actually need it, and say so out loud: "I will need your draft by Tuesday so I have buffer before Friday." If the pattern continues, raise it directly and in writing — the goal is not blame, but making the real deadline visible to both of you.