Today I want to ask you one question. Do you find yourself saying: “This task took longer than I expected”? Recently I noticed that several of my private clients said exactly this, and I thought: if they are having this problem, then there is a chance you might be experiencing a similar challenge as well. Today I would like to talk about why it is happening and what you can do about it.
So! You are working on a project and you’ve set yourself a personal deadline, or maybe you were given an external deadline. You started to work on one task and… it took longer than you thought. Then the next task took longer than you thought too! Soon, you find yourself missing the deadline. As a result, you get frustrated with yourself – wondering why can’t you manage your time any better. “Why is it taking so much longer?” This quickly leads to: “I am not good enough. I don’t know enough. I am not as efficient with my time as I should be.” And, of course, these thoughts do not exactly help you to complete your project!
Today I want to show you how to look at this situation differently – and how to become more efficient with your time.
Take your power back
When you say: “This task took longer than I thought”, it is as if you give your own power away and say: “This task has the power over my time”. But the thing is – and this is a universal law – the work takes all the time that is available. If you allow the task to take any amount of your time, then the work will expand proportionally!
Parkinson’s law says: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. So! The more time you allow for your task, the longer it will take to complete it. To get on top of your deadlines, and to become better at your time management, you need to start looking at your tasks from a different perspective.
Here is a productivity strategy to help you to turn this situation around.
Break it down into time-regulated chunks
To start: break your project down into smaller well-defined parts. Estimate how much time each task will take. Then give yourself a certain amount of time to complete each task.
Stop saying: “I wonder how long this task is going to take”. Instead, start saying: “I am giving this task a set amount of time to be completed”. It could be 30 min or one hour, or two hours, depending on what you are working on. If you cannot estimate the amount of time needed, you may need to break it down into even smaller and more-defined tasks, so that you know how much time you would need to complete each part. It takes practice to make a correct estimate. So keep practicing!
What happens when you say: “I give this task a set amount of time” is that you become focused and aim at completing this task imperfectly during the set time. …The keyword here is: “imperfectly”! It does not mean that you will end up with a bad or incomplete piece of work. Quite the opposite. What often happens is that you become much more focused and effective during this set amount of time and work efficiently towards a concrete result. You cover ground more quickly. Instead of stumbling and spending a disproportionate amount of time on one paragraph, you cover the whole section or chapter. Once the task is completed imperfectly, you can always go back to revise and improve it, which often only takes a little extra time.
To confirm the above, I’ve just heard from one of my private clients with whom we had a VIP session this week. She said that she completed a piece of writing of 2500 words from scratch in just three hours of focused work. Her writing speed was 830 words per hour! Not bad!! If you are new to this, you can start by aiming at 250 words per hour, and then increase it to 500 words per hour.
Own your time
Moving forwards, I want you to start viewing your time differently. To start realising that you own your time! You can actually decide how much time you give to certain tasks, to certain projects, to certain people, and to certain commitments. It’s your time! No-one can come and take it away from you unless you let them. In other words: Own your time, or be owned by it!
It might be hard to see how this strategy can work for you. Especially if you are in graduate school or a PhD student and often you feel like you’re not your own person, with everyone wanting a piece of you and your time. Yet with small tweaks in your mindset, and with practice and discipline, you too can start feeling more in control of your time! And when you master it, this will bring you an amazing feeling of liberation! You will find yourself being on time (or even early) with your deadlines, and having more free time for your hobbies and friends.
So, to summarise:
- Start looking at your time differently. Realise that you own your time. Start saying “I give a set amount of time to this task”, instead of wondering how long it will take.
- Break your project down into smaller tasks and give them very short deadlines. Focus on these tasks during well-defined periods of time, such as 30 minutes or one hour.
Happy accomplishing! I wish you all the best.
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