A month later, I applied the finishing touches.
So naturally, when it was time to paint the second room, I estimated that the task would take a month, right?
Wrong.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Why We're Bad at Estimating Time (and What to Do About It)
A month later, I applied the finishing touches.
So naturally, when it was time to paint the second room, I estimated that the task would take a month, right?
Wrong.
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11 comments:
Time management is something that is discussed a lot especially in college and as we enter our adult lives. The article in particular, calls upon the fact that avoiding time or the amount of time it actually takes to do something comes from what we think we know rather than the facts. For example in the article, the author predicted that it would take him a weekend to paint a room. After five executions while still testing the same theory, it was proven wrong all of the five times it was challenged. It is proven that a room cannot be painted in just weekend especially not with just one person doing all the labor. We rely on our predictions and prior knowledge rather than looking at statistics of people who had been there before. And with this, essentially over trusting, we are wasting time by doing what we think we know versus the factual evidence.
I feel like I have this same time management conversation with myself every single year and it always ends up pretty much the same way more or less, with me trying frantically to figure out just exactly what I did wrong. This article is pretty informative when it comes to figuring out and identifying potential habits that we fall into when trying to plan out our lives. I think the biggest inhibitor in time management is the fact that we can't figure out when we will be tired. I've oftentimes told myself, there just aren't enough hours in a day for me to get this done, do rehearsal, go to class, and get a healthy amount of sleep. The article talks about how we're optimistic with our future and how that is both good for our sanity but also ends up playing against us when it comes down to doing the work. Oftentimes, this can be a very soul sucking career and what everyone should be able to get out of this article is really knowing your own limits.
This article is definitely an important concept to keep in our heads especially when we find ourselves in managerial positions. As individuals I think we like to believe the things we are good at we can do very quickly when that may not be the case. I know I am much more likely to over estimate tasks that I am just learning or feel not as secure of my skills in. I think taking a more calculating approach for correcting this behavior is a good route to go down. You don’t really want to kill any kind of optimism you have because then you’ll likely just be on the opposite side of the spectrum and you’ll constantly be undermining your own skills and abilities which is not a good method of empowering yourself. Of course you do have to put effort into tracking your activity in order to correct your behavior but I think the initial time investment is worth it if you can hone in your time estimation skills because I feel as if that is an incredibly valuable skill to have great accuracy in.
This is a constant struggle and especially comes up when we are in positions in theatre were timeliness and proper management are so important. It’s always a constant struggle to estimate properly how much we are going to take to complete a task. I sometimes have this thought of what If someone were to time all of our “tasks” of an approximate time to see how long it really took us to work on something. Like what if there was a timer on a paper or in AutoCad or even on the shop floor that tracked each individuals efficiency and timelines with no pressure on themselves just so that a computer could average it out. I think the reason for this crazy dream of my of course comes from my own issues with time management and allocating things properly for myself to do certain tasks. This of course is something that will grow with time I think something that I think students in particular have little of but is an invaluable skill to have.
I have always known that I am horrible at estimating, not just time really everything. So I really enjoyed reading this article because it showed me that I am not the only one is bad at estimating time. I found it really helpful, it is nice to be able to put a name like optimism bias and planning fallacy to some of the problems I have with estimating. This article definitely has some helpful tips to be better at estimating like looking back at the historical data, estimating in ranges and maybe have someone else do it for you. Although I don’t think any of this information is radical or new it is definitely something that is good to be reminded of something to remember. I think so many people, including myself, get so caught up in trying to finish something in the time we allotted to do that the quality of the work sometimes suffers, so being better at estimating will definitely help fix this problem.
I think that tracking your time is really the only way to overcome the planning fallacy for good. People won't recognize how long something takes them unless they are faced with the evidence. I use an hourly planner and I update it so I can go back every week and accurately fill out those surveys that ask how much time I spent on homework that week. This has helped me estimate a lot more accurately. That said, sometimes consideration of quality can be lost in the mess of estimating. That is why I think the comments about scheduling in time for mistakes and planning when you are feeling a little more pessimistic are really useful. I also think that we overestimate learning curve sometimes and convince ourselves that once we learn how to do something we can cut tons of time off and that simply isn't true much of time.
There is a lot of useful information presented in this article, as well as a few books that seem like good further reading. I know that I am terrible at estimating time. I tend to either work from the worst case scenario, which has a number of drawbacks, or I grossly underestimate and let my teammates’ skepticism guide me back to safe margins. I am particularly interested in the idea of estimating during your “trough” as a protection from optimism. Overall, the message is clear that the only defense against poor time estimation is gathering good data to draw from. However, since we seem to reinvent the wheel every other Tuesday, data will often only take us so far. I like the three-point estimation system the best, as it requires you to consider multiple outcomes. In theory, I think, that would have the best impact on the budgeting process, building in a safety factor without bloating it out too far.
This is a very informative article. It is quite fascinating that optimism is one of the two key factors that cause this planning fallacy. I am an optimist, I tend to think that things are going to be good and that you shouldn’t start or go into anything if you can’t see a good side to it at the very least. This is where is gets interesting. I am actually pretty good at estimating but only things I have done before. If I have never done it, I usually just set aside a very large chunk of time and hope I can do it in that time rather than plan on being done in that time. Every once in a while, I do fall into the trap and find myself underestimating and it usually screws me over a little bit. However, I know people who act and consider themselves pessimistic or realistic and I found the more pessimistic, the more they underestimate the task. My theory is that it ends up going against them and that reinforces their views even if an optimist like myself points out the pattern and a solution to fix it. Nevertheless, these tips on how to fix this problem yourself are quite useful, I am curious to test how well they actually work.
Time management and time estimation is an important skill for us not only as future professionals and managers but also as regular college students. Every time we plan out when to work on an assignment or project, we are subconsciously estimating the time needed for it, allowing us to decide “I need to start this a week out” or “I can leave this all to Sunday no problem”. The issue occurs when we estimate incorrectly, causing late nights and overdue assignments. I really liked how this article put names to some of the traps I find myself falling into- instead of just saying “I’m bad at estimating”, I have specific strategies to counteract it. I think this can also be very relevant to our future management work, and some of these are strategies that we use already, such as consulting historical data in the form of “mainstages always need about this much”, or planning on behalf of crew rather than yourself.
I’m terrible at time estimation. I almost always way overestimate how much time it’ll take to get somewhere, and underestimate how much time it’ll take me to complete a project or task. I know in the past the time estimation has been a part of the problem of turning some of my design projects in on time. I’ll think that putting together one part of my project will take maybe a little over an hour, when really it winds up taking over four hours. So of course, when I saw that there was an article addressing this I clicked on it instantly. The two key factors that are pointed out in the beginning of not considering past similar tasks and assuming no complications are issues I face constantly. I like how it lays out different steps on how to overcome these issues and details how to go about them. I definitely think implementing some of these tactics for my future projects will be very helpful, and hopefully I’ll eventually see some improvements in being able to estimate correctly.
I’m terrible at time estimation. I almost always way overestimate how much time it’ll take to get somewhere, and underestimate how much time it’ll take me to complete a project or task. I know in the past the time estimation has been a part of the problem of turning some of my design projects in on time. I’ll think that putting together one part of my project will take maybe a little over an hour, when really it winds up taking over four hours. So of course, when I saw that there was an article addressing this I clicked on it instantly. The two key factors that are pointed out in the beginning of not considering past similar tasks and assuming no complications are issues I face constantly. I like how it lays out different steps on how to overcome these issues and details how to go about them. I definitely think implementing some of these tactics for my future projects will be very helpful, and hopefully I’ll eventually see some improvements in being able to estimate correctly.
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