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Double time

There is never enough time.

There are theories about why we’re so bad at predicting how long things will take: the planning fallacy, Brooke’s law (admittedly a variation on the theme), and my personal favourite, Hofstadter’s law:

It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Others have written helpful things about how to mitigate this problem.* I propose a simple experiment: allow double the time you think you’ll need for all of your tasks in the coming week.**

Let me know how it goes.

*One of the more helpful approaches is to ask how long similar tasks have taken in the past.

**Not including tasks where you know how long they’ll take – in those cases, you’re not estimating.***

***If in doubt, though, you don’t know.

I'd love to hear your thoughts and recommended resources...

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