In the late 1970’s, psychologist Daniel Kahneman proposed
that when planning a task, humans budget their time optimistically. It happens
with yardwork: You plan an hour to weed the garden, it takes two. It even
happens at Office Administration Associates: We budget an hour for a new
client’s payroll, it invariably swells to two.
The weeding gets done and the payroll gets posted on
time. Nothing fatal about that
optimistic time management flaw, until it becomes your business plan. When you
underestimate the time, you’re likely double-booking your time because there
are few days when you have only ONE project or client on the calendar.
Here are a few tactics to avoid erring on the short side of
the time you budget for a project:
1)
Use past experience as a guide, not as a rule.
the phrase “it always took an hour, except when…” really means that we
should budget the time for the exceptions.
2)
See the small picture. The big picture is that
it takes me 15 minutes to get from appointment A to appointment B because
Google Maps said so. Google maps doesn’t account for you grabbing your keys,
getting out of the building, finding a parking spot, etc. The 15 min. is the
big picture, the other steps are the small picture.
3)
Automatically ‘pad’ your best-guess time
estimate based on 1) and 2) by an extra 15 minutes. The 1957 book by Northcote
Parkinson gave us Parkinson’s Law: Work expands so as to fill the time
available for its completion. It holds true 60 years later despite all our
time-saving gadgetry.
4)
Delegate what you can. Small business owners who
succeed are the ones that embrace the idea that they don’t personally have to
do everything. They hire pros to help with the tasks (marketing, office
management, equipment maintenance, etc.) that take time away from client-facing
or client-servicing roles. There are enough
hours in a day when you aren’t trying to take on everything.
We’re all busy. If they plan properly, no entrepreneur has
to be late or miss deadlines – both of which are customer-service suicide.
Photo by Catalin Petolea, used with permission.
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