Episode 135: Tips for Realistic Task and Project Time Estimates

Who hasn't said, "This will only take a sec", only to have the task take an hour or more? In this final episode in the "Your Day->Your Life" series, we look at how we can improve our ability to estimate the time needed for focused tasks and more complex projects.

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The information contained and documents referenced in the podcast “Your Priority Centered Life” are for entertainment, educational and informational purposes only, and are not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, professional medical or health treatment, diagnosis, or advice. We strongly encourage listeners to consult with medical providers or qualified mental health providers with issues and questions regarding any physical and/or mental health symptoms or concerns that they may have. Furthermore, the opinions and views expressed by podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates are not necessarily those of the podcast host. Dr. Alise Murray’s opinions and views are expressed in her individual capacity and are not to be construed as those of any of her podcast guests, partners and/or affiliates.

Transcript

(Transcript is autogenerated and may contain minor errors.)

 Hello, Dr. Alise here.  Today we're wrapping up the Your Day, Your Life Series by talking about estimating time accurately. I have a lot of clients who say that this is really difficult for them,  

So one thing that we want to consider is,  if you are trying to have time for your high priority tasks,  we really want to try to plan those tasks for times when you're going to be at higher energy and really doing what you can to try to minimize interruptions and to minimize context switching when you're going from one thing to another and then back to the first thing and that sort of thing. The more that you can do that, the more streamlined the process will be, and then that will help with reducing the amount of time required. 

So looking at the actual time that is required for projects, some things that you can do, first of all of course, is if you are not really sure how much time to allow, then you can ask people who are more experienced with this now. Clearly somebody who's highly experienced with doing something may take less time than somebody who is not very experienced at doing it. So you want to be careful here, but it can at least help you from being wildly different from what you thought. 

Also when you're estimating your time, instead of just coming up with a single amount, it's a good idea to really kind of think in terms of best case, worst case. For example, if you are not able to have the task happen at a time when you are going to be interruption free, when you're gonna be able to silence your phone and not have people coming and needing you,  then you might really want to have the worst case scenario be quite a bit different.  If you're a parent with kids, you might even wanna double the amount of time because you know that you're going to be interrupted.  But if that's not the case, you know, not quite as extreme as that, then you might  add a fourth of the time on there. So for instance,  "I'm thinking,  this is gonna take me an hour, but just to be on the safe side, I think I'm going to add in another 15 minutes."  Or even a half hour if you really wanna be very careful about it. 

You also want to make sure that you have really thought through all the details of what you're doing. So if it's a more complicated task, then it's probably more like a project than a task. If it's got several moving parts, several pieces, then you're going to want to really think through, what are all the pieces? What needs to happen first before the next thing happens, and then what needs to happen? And then treat each of those pieces as a separate task where you are estimating time. 
If you really need to get an idea of about how long the project will take, then you're going to add all those pieces together. And again, think in terms of range. Think about best case, worst case. 

So for instance, if you felt like I really need to paint the bathroom, well, you know, that's a project, not a not a task, right? So we need to think about how much time will it take to go get paint chips. How much time will it take to bring the paint chips home and make a decision about color, how much time will it take to actually buy the paint and supplies. And then there's taping the room down and putting your tarp down.  And then there's the actual painting, and then there's the drying time  and taking the tape off. So there are a lot of different pieces involved and just adding all of those together, but what's really key is to carefully consider all the different steps here. And sometimes when you do that, then you'll discover, "oh, I don't have the right kind of paint roller." So you know, really thinking it through so that you don't get thrown off and realize, "oh no, I forgot to account for this." Really trying to minimize that. 

Another thing that can really help with time estimation, let's say that it's not a project. Let's say that it's something that is something that comes up from time to time. Something that you do, and you're just not sure how much time to allow for it. Maybe this is a certain kind of report that you need to write and you find that you just keep staying at the office late because you cannot get this report done. 
It can be useful to start to keep track when you're doing this report. And then you can start to get better at coming up with your estimate best case, worst case. 

One thing that you can do that can make this easier. You can, of course, just look at the time and write down the start time, write down the stop time. You can just keep track in a little notebook. Another thing though, that you can do, one app that I like is A Time Logger, and an advantage of doing an app like this is you can put in whatever task you're curious about and then all you have to do is tap on the little icon that you've chosen for that task and hit start. And then hit stop at the end and it will calculate the amount of time for you. It will also help you keep track of the amount of time over time so that then you can get that average right within the app. And that can be really useful. 

If it's something like let's say you're trying to figure out, "how can I get out the door on time in the morning?" You want to collect some data on this and see what parts of your morning routine are slowing you down. You can use an app, Routine Flow I've mentioned before. It's a great app because you can say, for instance, "I wanna set up a morning routine." It will give you suggestions for  what steps might be included in your morning routine at about how much time. You can adjust these up and down. You can take out steps, you can add in steps, you can reorder them, and once you have everything the way you like it. Then when it's time to do your morning routine,  you can also set a notification to remind you,  once you press go, then your whole phone will light up with the first step in your morning routine, and it will show you with a running time bar how much time you have used up and how much time you have left, and then you get done with that,  bang, swipe it, go to the next one and it will keep that data for you. So it'll make suggestions. It'll say something like, "you allowed 15 minutes to have breakfast. You've actually been taking 25 minutes. Do you want to change your time to 25 minutes?" And you can set it for whatever you want.  So that can be very useful. 

So once you've collected some data, then you should start to get a better idea of how long it takes to do some of these tasks. Keep in mind though that it's not necessarily going to remain the same. Your life circumstances can change. You can get better at it, so it takes you less time, or the task can change so that now for instance, your manager's requiring a couple of additional steps, and so now the task is taking longer. So keep in mind that you're possibly going to need to do this exercise again to re-estimate. if you find that you're running into like the worst case scenario over and over.  Then try running this again for a few days. Visualize the process and see  what might have changed, what might be bogging the process down. Sometimes things change like, well, now there's more traffic, or "My child's needs are different, so now I need to adjust for that". So be flexible and keep in mind that you're probably going to need to tinker with your time estimates from time to time. Have a great day.