The #1 time management question to ask yourself when approaching any task is, “How long is this going to take?” Yet, we often resist asking ourselves this question for fear of discovering that we actually don’t have enough time to do it all. Better close our eyes, jump in, and hope for the best.
Other times, we miscalculate based on wishful thinking — we believe if we are extra disciplined and diligent, we can get things done more quickly than usual. Unfortunately, denial doesn’t change reality. Things take as long as they take. If we ignore the truth, we may very well run out of time before we’ve even started on the most important work. That is why asking the question, “How long will this take?” of every single task you do is the number one gateway skill — not only to good time management, but to peak prioritization.
Unfortunately, it’s easy to dramatically under- or overestimate how long tasks take based on how we feel about them. More often than not, we feel that tasks that we don’t enjoy doing take far longer than they actually do, whereas tasks that we do enjoy doing only seem to take a few seconds. In order to be effective at time estimating, you must take your feelings out of the equation. To find out how long it really takes you to do things, you must move away from wishful thinking and take a more quantitative approach.
Improving Your Own Estimating Skills
As best you can, try to be literal when you make a time estimate. So many of us are in the habit of saying, “that’ll take two seconds,” whether we’re talking about getting dressed, making a call, or running to the store. Silly as it may seem, this affects the way we think about time. If you break this habit and start paying attention to how long things really take, you’ll find it’s much easier to accomplish all you want to do. Here are two exercises to help you quantify the time it really takes you to conquer your to-dos:
Exercise #1: Target Three Tasks
Choose three tasks you tend to procrastinate on, and study yourself. Create a chart that looks something like this:
Time yourself doing each task at least three times to get a solid average. If your times vary dramatically, did you approach the task at different times of day? That could affect your energy or ability to concentrate.
Exercise #2: Keep a Time Journal
For one week, next to each item you put on your to-do list, jot down how long you think it will take. Then, when you do the task, time yourself, and write down the actual time it took to complete it. Your list may look something like this:
Compare your estimates to the actuals. Do you see a pattern? Are your estimates always off by the same amount of time or the same percentage of time? Are there certain types of tasks you find harder to judge than others (e.g. work tasks vs. personal tasks, tasks you enjoy vs. ones you don’t, etc.)? Are there some tasks that look much more or much less time than you estimated? What does that tell you about your relationship to the task?
In one week, you might not have gotten to all the kinds of tasks you routinely do. Or you might not feel you’ve fully gotten a handle on this skill yet. That’s okay! Try keeping a time journal for up to a month and observe how your time estimating abilities change as you master this tool and make it your own. It’s worth the effort. Once you get good at this skill, you will be able to schedule your time much more realistically — which is to say, much more effectively.
It’s worth noting, you won’t have to be this detailed forever. After two weeks to a month of concerted effort, you won’t have to estimate the time required for each and every five-minute task on your list. You’ll develop a keen sense of how many calls you can fit into an hour time slot, or how long it takes you to make a standard weeknight meal.
Once you know how long it takes you to do something, you can more easily find the room in your schedule to get it done. Alternatively, you may decide it’s a better use of your time and energy to delegate the task to someone else, diminish the task for a better return on investment, or delete the task altogether. Now that’s what I call proactive time management.
For more tips from our Time Management Mastery Series, see:
The # 1 Time Management Question to Ask Yourself
How to Keep Track of Your To-Dos