On planning when you don't know how long a task will take
Something that has come up a lot lately in conversations I've had with my coachees and with other business owners and creatives, is that planning is really hard when we don't know how long a task is going to take.
And I've been thinking that we’re focusing on the wrong thing!
We're putting too much emphasis on *having to know* how long a task will take.
While *knowing* would be helpful for planning, us knowing won't change the reality of how long a task will take.
Plus there are a ton of things that influence how quickly we can finish a task (high vs low energy, unexpected events, how well we slept, worries, feeling inspired, what a friend said to us the other day, hormones etc) – so how long a task will take will fluctuate from one day to the next. Or even from morning to afternoon!
What if we stopped worrying so much about how long a task will take, and instead just made sure that all the things on our list are important to do no matter how long they take?
And we'd take breaks when we've planned to, and stop working at the ish time we've planned to.
All my weekly plans are educated guesses of how many tasks I can fit into my work week, and I batch together similar tasks onto the same day because I know that’s super helpful for the brain – but once I'm living through it I see how the week actually shakes out.
(I don't have a regular hard stop time for work, but I usually get off the computer around the same time unless I finished my tasks early. If I don't have other plans when I’m “supposed to” stop working, I'll finish a task up if it's almost done, if it truly needs to be finished that day, or if I'm feeling super inspired to keep going - and can give myself a shorter day within a couple days.)
So – let’s stop focusing on the wrong thing and instead focus on whether or not our planned tasks matter.
Now – of course sometimes when we’re in the middle of a task and it’s taking longer than we expected, it can bring motivation down a bit. So here’s a non-fluffy affirmation you could use when you notice that you start getting frustrated by how long something is taking:
It takes as long as it takes.
….But of course, if you can simplify it to make it quicker to do, I 100% approve. (Maybe I could even be able to help you with that – reach out and let me know if you’d like support.)