Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

How to Stop Underestimating How Long Your Tasks Will Take by Switching to “Project Time”

Everybody underestimates how long it takes to get things done.

Building a cathedral or fixing a meal, humans have a documented inability to realistically plan for how long tasks take.

Why?

• Optimism: we assume that nothing (or at least very little) will go wrong
• Scope: we forget that there’s more to the project (prep work, follow up)
• Energy: we either underestimate the effort it will require, or overestimate the energy we will have available
• Chance: we can’t account for all the unexpected variables (2020, anyone?)

Gantt charts, to-do lists, action items, agendas, schedules, quarterly planning retreats, all are based on the expectation that what we imagine will somehow become reality.

There’s a phrase for that: magical thinking.

There’s a simple way to make sure that you spend exactly as much time as a task requires.

Instead of task lists, use project time.

Keep your to-do apps! They’re great! But think of them as recipes, not agendas. The elements are all the things that go into a project, the same way that flour…