There’s a saying that everything takes twice as long, and costs twice as much, as you might think. From my experience, this is true more often than not.
It’s a common temptation to underestimate how long or how difficult something will be. Perhaps we haven’t done that very thing enough times to accurately predict how it’s going to go. We know theoretically how it ‘should’ go, but how it ‘should’ go, and how it ‘does’ go may be vastly different.
Or we may estimate based solely on the best case scenario. We remember that one trip, or that one project, or that one client, where everything went perfectly. And so we make the assumption that everything will always go that smoothly.
The problem with underestimating is that when things don’t pan out the way we predicted, we can end up getting frustrated. And if we’re working on a team, the delay can also affect the plans of those around us.
Because it can be easy to underestimate what we’re getting ourselves into, consciously adding in some margin into our plans is a good idea.
How much? It depends how well we know the demands of the situation. Is it something we’ve done numerous times, and have first-hand experience of what it takes? Do we have trusted advisors who can give us an accurate estimate of the time and money that will be involved? If not, taking what we think it ‘should’ take — which is usually a best case scenario — and doubling it may be a good place to start.
The benefit to purposefully adding some buffer into our planning, is that if things go a little longer than we originally thought, we’re less easily frustrated. If this project around the house should theoretically take 2 hours to do, but I intentionally block out 4 to do it, then if it ends up taking 3, I’m happy that I got it done an hour early, rather than being frustrated that it went an hour over.
Things are often easier in theory than in practice. And we may be tempted to plan based on the best case scenario, instead of assuming that some things may not go according to plan. Which is why adding a little margin into our plans makes a lot of sense, and can save us the frustration of trying to meet unrealistic expectations.