Estimates and planning are some of my favourite topics just because it seems nobody gets them right – including myself. We are constantly over-optimistic when it comes to the pile of work we can get done in a certain amount of time. One of the best rules is to take your best estimate, double it and increase to the next higher unit (from minutes to hours, from hours to days or from days to weeks). Yet we shy away from applying a rule like this because we believe it is grossly overestimating – but we are actually wrong and the rule mostly right.

Ira Hymen covers the subject with some great insight in her “Sorry I’m Late, Again” article.

Simplicity Bliss

The problem hinges on what information people use to make the judgment. People typically focus on the future. [But] people rarely think about future problems. They think about past failures to meet deadlines even less frequently. So the first problem is that they may know they haven’t finished on time before, but not use that information in making a new estimate.

The studies cited in the article are quite telling: We consistently go beyond out worst estimates and whether we gain from the result of the planned activity or not seems to make no difference. Apparently it all comes down to our inability to accept and therefore plan disruptions.

Why do we always think that the disruption or distraction that happened last time won’t repeat itself? Yes, last time it took me two days to respond to that important email, but only because Simon scheduled this conference call which then resulted in this whole set of urgent actions. But surely Jack won’t do it again this time. But maybe Michael does or something else happens.

For the many years I am now practicing GTD® the one thing I have learned is to never underestimate ad-hoc work. There are times where ad-hoc work is the default situation: My company has just recently finished its fiscal year and as a sales manager it was evident that I will be bombarded with ad-hoc issues and requests in the last 2-3 weeks leading up to the event. As a consequence I simply did not plan much, some days not even any, scheduled work (predefined tasks on a todo lists). Instead I deliberately sat in front of my email inbox, instant messenger and phones and waited for the work to show up. And it did show up like a truck rolling over me.

But very often we have no chance to anticipate the amount of ad-hoc work coming at us. However, the mistake we then typically make is a rather stupid one: In our planning we pretend there is no ad-hoc work coming at all! This leads to the typical frustrations you face when not even 1/3 of the pre-defined work you lined up for the day got done. Starring at the todo list the end of the day will not deliver much feelings of accomplishment or success, instead you’ll just feel miserable.

But you should not because you never had a chance to accomplish all these tasks to start with. The failure is not a function of your inability to execute and “do”, but a function of your inability to plan.

I am battling with the Planning Fallacy ever since I am planning. There seems to be no silver bullet or light bulb moment that fixes the problem, instead you can apply some tactics to get along with it better:

  • Use a “Next Action” list instead of a daily todo list and work off it as much as you can while dealing with all the ad-hoc stuff showing up – this list represent commitments you need to get done, there is no obligation to complete all or any of them today
  • If a daily todo list is important to you – and this is about tasks you want to do today, not those that are genuinely due today – keep it down to 2-3 entries
  • If you have the habit of overloading your daily todo list just plan as usual and then shave off 2/3 from the list
  • Just admit and accept that there is not only pre-defined work, but also meetings, conference calls and emails that will alter the day’s schedule – only the magnitude of alteration is the variable

Eventually it is all down to setting expectations with yourself. If you set out to complete 30 tasks at the start of the day and end up with just 7 ticked close of business, you are naturally disappointed. When your initial target was 3 pieces of pre-defined work and you ended up doing 5 because less ad-hoc work came in, your after work beer tastes just twice as good.