14 - Why is it so hard to know how long things will take?
episode 14 - Why is it so hard to know how long things will take?
The question on almost every mind I encounter is why is it so HARD to know how long things wil take? As a scholar, you'll be asked to do a LOT of self-directed work and it's really hard to plan and adjust if you can't estimate how long something we'll take. We'll talk about how this shows up, and why some of the most common advice (add in buffer time) can really backfire. Get into it!
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📍 Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar. We'll talk about why some of these things are so hard, and how that difficulty is showing up for you. Each episode has practical strategies to experiment with -- just because it's hard now doesn't mean it always has to be.
You can get my free working more intentionally toolkit@thrive-phd.com or the link in the show notes. If you want to go even deeper with the work.
You asked, I listen a viewer request episode of this podcast, all about how hard it is to know how long something will take. This is hard for everybody. I don't care if you're a scholar. I don't care if you have never written a long form project in your life. It is really hard to know how long things will take. Here are a couple of the reasons why.
Number one. Optimism. We truly believe - and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that the more times that you do something, say, write a dissertation chapter or grade a final paper - that you get better and faster at it as you go along.
However. That sense that we're getting better at it can cause us to make optimistic deadlines for ourselves. Often, these are grounded less in the amount of time or the amount of energy a task will take and more in the, when we would like to be done ism of all of it.
I know that for me, I often say things like, ah, this should take me until the end of the day. Not because I know that there are X number of hours left in the day and I need X number of hours to do this project. But because I want to be done at the end of the day. So there's the sense of optimism and also a sense that we're building around when we'd like to be done versus when it will actually be done.
But it's also true that rarely are we focusing on one thing at a time, at least not over the course of a day or even a half day. So, yes, you may be objectively to getting faster at reading or writing, but if you are arriving to your appointed, writing time with, Hey. Real grading headache then. Yeah. It's going to take you longer because you have more things going on. So it's really hard to estimate because the way that you show up for the task is dependent on what things you did before, what things you'll do do later, and also the brain and body resources that for some of us really fluctuate.
As a person who has a chronic illness, I'm used to things really fluctuating in terms of what body shows up, what brain shows up. But, yeah, it's frustrating to not be able to know this'll take four hours, but four good hours four medium hours four I'm bundled up on the couch, but still theoretically working hours.
All of those different measurements are things that I work with, but they're also not the same.
The last thing is that specifically for scholars or people in academia? Things that are done don't tend to stay done. So you might be done grading for the semester, except for those two students that took an incomplete that you have to grade four or five months down the road. Things might feel really done and buttoned up with your manuscript. You sent it off to the journal and then it comes back for revise and resubmit. And you've got to find time in your schedule to do that. So estimating how long things will take is really hard because so many of these projects are overlapping happening at the same time.
And we don't have control over when actually they're done and acceptable to other people, because that's just the way that so many of these big complex projects work. It's not solely up to us.
Let's use these questions to drill down a little deeper into how and why, and for what reasons you're estimating your tasks and what goes into that. First question. What is your estimation pattern? Do you set a deadline? Do you tend to start with the task and break that into smaller pieces and assign deadlines for each of those?
Do you avoid a project until the anxiety becomes so intense that you have no choice, but to work on it. But what are your practices right now around estimating how long things will take and building that into your schedule?
Second question. How do people around you set time estimates? Are you working in a lab where not only are your deadlines pretty murky, but your PIs deadlines are pretty murky and the postdocs deadlines are pretty murky? Is your chair, somebody who says that they'll have something back for you on Friday or Monday, and then we'll also go dark for a couple of weeks when it's not done?
How are you seeing other people set these deadlines and what messages are you absorbing about that?
And last but not least. What data do you already have about what time it takes for you to do things? Do you have a planner that you can flip back on and see how long that you've worked on certain projects? Do you have a sense on your LMS, like canvas how long it takes for you to grade a paper or how many hours a week you're actually spending on a course site?
Maybe you have time logs, but what data do you have about how long things take you?
All right. The juicy stuff. Let's get into those experiments to try to see if we can't make estimating time just a little bit easier. So the first one is a suggestion that I have mentioned before, but in this case, I think it can be really helpful and it's keeping a time log. This can be as high-tech or low-tech as you needed to be.
I have done this with browser extensions, like toggle. I have set timers on my desk using a manual. flip timer that counts down for me. I've used pom trackers. I have used a printout to say start time, end time of various tasks, but you don't really know how long things are going to take you.
If you don't know how long it's already taken you to do a similar version of that task. So, yeah, it can be a little bit confronting to be like, wow. I thought that it took me 20 minutes to grade a paper and it actually takes me 40. But if you are spending 40 minutes and truly believing in your heart of hearts, that it's only taking you 20, that's never going to help you fix that estimation problem. And ultimately that's what we're trying to get at here. So the better data you have, the more realistic those deadlines can be.
It's all going to be based on optimism unless we base it on data. So even if it's a little bit sticky, Let's collect some data.
Number two. This experiment is for all of my out of sight, out of mind, people or out of this week's calendar out of mind, people. Where, if a deadline isn't in the zone where I call it sort of like immediately tangible for me, that zone is about 72 hours. I can hold about two and a half days in my brain at once. And then things start to get a little bit fuzzy. So if it's not due by the end of the week, or maybe even a little bit longer or shorter than that, but if it's not in that zone of tangibility, it doesn't make sense to me. So it really doesn't make a difference if it's due in a year or in six months or in three weeks, they're all in that "not now" time category, and I'm not focused on them. Your zone might be a little bit bigger or a little bit smaller, but if you have a zone where things are tangible or they don't exist, it can be really helpful to counter those disappearing deadlines. You can maybe have a scheduled countdown where it says, okay, two weeks until this happens three weeks until this happens, or maybe you have a monthly planning practice where you check in every week and say, okay,
These are the things that I'm doing here are the things I want to get done at the end of the month. How much time do I have to sort of do that?
Scheduling a weekly check-in can really help counter those disappearing deadlines. Sending update emails to your advisor can help counter those disappearing deadlines and even starting a practice where you keep a done log or a planner where you notice what things you've checked off, and also what things you're not working on can be really helpful to make those projects that just don't feel real to you because they're not in the right now time.
Feel a little bit more tangible. Of course, and there will be other episodes in there already been other episodes about breaking things down into smaller pieces or giving yourself little dopamine hits in terms of rewards to help you through those middle stages where you've planned it. And it's not quite due yet.
But anything in that zone is going to be useful.
Last bit, at least is an experiment that I personally love, but I know it can be a little bit tricky for people. So let's actually dig into when giving yourself some extra time before a deadline - when you're estimating, how long things will take- when that actually helps. And when it can be a little bit counterproductive,
So the first thing that anybody reads on the internet, if they Google, how to get better at estimating deadlines. Is the stock advice to add in some buffer time. If you think it's going to take you two weeks double it. That's common academic advice, however long you think it's going to take, make it two times that length that you actually expect to work on it.
I find that the math isn't that easy and different tasks in different people use different multiplication factors. But that sense of, yes, I do want some flexibility and if this plan will only work. If every day is perfect and every day has the exact right amount of hours and there are no snags and no difficulties. Well then it's not a very robust or resilient plan.
So I like to add in buffer points around my check-ins. So if I'm working on a project that I expect will take me two or three months. I might have check-ins every two weeks and I might schedule a buffer day at the end of every two week period to. To catch up where I don't schedule anything. I don't have anything on the calendar, but I, you know, work on all of the things that got left by the wayside in the intervening 13 days before.
You might want to schedule a buffer day. Regularly. I can sometimes have seasons where I have them on Wednesday afternoons and Friday afternoons where I just catch up. You might want to have a whole week or maybe two weeks of buffer time before you submit a really big draft or before a big conference where you're traveling so that you're not working right up until the last minute.
But thinking about that buffer time as time that helps you surf the unpredictability of it. So whenever you're doing those estimations, make the estimation based on the results of your first experiment, the actual data, and then add buffer to that to help you prepare for the unexpected.
The thing that actually really hurts people when they add in this extra time is that they assume that they can spend it. It's sort of like having a flexible budget. Where, you know, if it's the beginning of the month and you're feeling flush and you know that you have X number of dollars in sort of like your fun money, you might spend that a couple of times early on in the month because you're like, yeah, you know, it's early! I have fun. I'll get it from other places.
And I find that buffer time and flexible deadlines can be like that too. That the earlier you are in the process, the harder it is to spend that time responsibly, so to speak. So I like to add in a lot of support in the beginning and middle of the projects, like I mentioned at other episodes, so that I'm not spending that buffer time before I actually need it.
Of course, if you wake up and you feel like trash, or you have the completely unexpected thing happen and you lose two weeks of it, then yeah, go ahead and spend your buffer time. That's what it's there for. But having more regular, check-ins seeing what things you can do. Moving in smaller pieces more frequently can help you not spend it right away, especially if it's burning a hole in your metaphorical pocket.
But let's reiterate that this will be hard probably for the rest of your life until you figure out how to control time. And if you figure out how to do that, please let me know because I'm in the market to control some time. But. All jokes aside. This is one of the things that is most difficult. And I find that so much of the anxiety comes from the idea that, oh, I can't be accountable. I never meet my deadlines.
When in reality, the most severe consequences, the ones that feel really awful, come from us not communicating about our changing deadlines, not the fact that the deadlines changed at all. So I hope that a couple of these experiments might help you make more accurate estimations in the first place.
Might help you adjust when you notice that they're starting to drift, but most of all, they help you to build in some compassion so that if, and when you do get off track, because we all do, you know who to reach out for, who can help you and what things will be useful as you get back to where you wanted to be.
See you next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. And if you're liking what you're hearing, please subscribe, rate, and review to help other people find the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!