How good are you at estimating time?
I remember my days during University when I
had major assignments to do. At the beginning I had the terrible habit of
leaving things till the end. Not an uncommon habit at the time, but that gave
me no comfort!
Another big project. 2 weeks till its due? No
problem. I can do it in 4 days.
The result? You guessed it. I'd be pulling 3
all-nighters in a row in a mad rush to finish.
Here's another scenario, which I happen to run
into all the time.
Do you have .. ahem.. friends who
have an appointment at 9 o'clock and leave the house at 8:55? ... And are
surprised when they arrive half an hour late?
It seems like a lot of people (including me
during University) just start out being horrible at estimating time accurately.
During my early years as a manager overseeing
a whole team of engineers at Redhat, estimating time accurately became
absolutely essential for me. It was no longer just a matter of sleepness nights
over a college assignment. These were big, multi-team, internationally
coordinated projects at stake.
Luckily for me, I encountered these challenges
during my early days exploring and trying out different lifehacks. It was here
when I found a method that really gave me a eureka moment. I don't remember if
it has a name, but I personally like to call it the Rewind and Reduce Method. This method helped me to not
only systematically break down a project, but also set achievable deadlines
that I could very confidently achieve consistently.
It made me into one of the most reliable
performers, and the go-to guy for a lot of important projects.
It just takes 3 simple steps.
The first step is to Rewind. Start from the end, take your
final goal and work backwards,
identifying the main milestones you need to accomplish it.
For example, say I'm planning how to write my
next article.
Well, working backwards, some
milestones I may identify might be:
1. Review
the final copy
2. Edit
and modify the draft
3. Have an
editor review my draft
4. Write
the first draft
5. Create
my article outline
6. Think
of a topic and gather material
The second step is to Reduce. With each milestone, break it
down into bite-sized actions. Bite-sized means they are focused on one specific
objective, and is something you expect to finish within an hour. Next is to
estimate how long you'll spend on each task. The more bite-sized the task, the
easier and more accurate it is to estimate.
Finally, the third step is to add up all your
estimates for each milestone to arrive at a pretty accurate timeline. Going
back to my article example, say my deadline is end of Friday, and I can only devote 1 hr a day to work on it.
Here's how I Rewind and Reduce:
- Review
the final copy and publish - 0.5 hr (Friday)
- Edit
and modify the draft - 1 hr (Thursday)
- Have
an editor review my draft - 0.5 hr (Wednesday)
- Write
the first draft - 1 hr (Tuesday)
- Create
my article outline - 0.5 hr (Monday)
- Think
of a topic and gather material - 0.5 hr
Total estimated time: 4 hrs
From the milestones I worked backwords from, I
realize that I'll need to get it to an editor by Wednesday. That means that the
absolute latest I can
start is on Monday in order to reasonably hit my deadline. Pretty easy, right?
Lifehack.org
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