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Having a long pile of to do items can be overwhelming. Organizing them based on their importance and urgency should be the filters that we should use most of the time. However, there might be also be another useful filter that can come in hand at times when we are not sure that the above mentioned filters are pointing to the right task to be done at a certain period of time. This important filter is the estimation of the time needed for tasks that are on our to-do lists to be completed.
There might be different tasks that can be really important and maybe urgent, and it just does not seem clear what to focus on. Having an estimation about the time we think it needs to take for a task to be completed can blur out this dilemma.
It helps you beat procrastination, because that way you can decide whether that task can be included in your schedule. Sometimes, some tasks might bring you some initial resistance that can prevent you from starting acting on them. You might start going to social media and engage yourself in unimportant distractions and waste your valuable time this way. I am not saying that you should totally abandon your social media, but I am suggesting to commit doing the work. Going to social media is not a substitute for the work that matters and can only be a way to stay in the comfort zone and avoid taking action.
Having the ability to see all the tasks that need to be done and having a time estimation can give you the opportunity to choose something that might be the appropriate fit in your schedule. Let’s say that you might have a meeting half an hour later. Rather than trying to plan to finish a big project during those thirty minutes, it is better to choose something important from your list that you think will take such amount of time and have a great feeling of accomplishment by finishing it before your meeting. You can also start working on a big project, but it might be a bit unrealistic and stressful for you to think that thirty minutes might be sufficient for you to finish all the work, when in reality it might take ten times more.
Having said that, remember to always estimate longer than you might expect. There are different things that simply do not go as we think should. Moreover, unexpected events might happen in the last minute out of nowhere and the initial plan might fall apart. As times passes by, you might get better at doing these prior estimations and be able to make better estimations in the future
Adding a time estimation before tasks should not be taken as a mandatory act that needs to be done each time you want to work on something, but might come in hand at times when you get stuck and simply cannot choose what to work on. Nonetheless, using it regularly might increase your productivity levels.
