Most people — ourselves included — are a lot less productive than they think they are. And they grossly overestimate what they are capable of accomplishing within a given time frame.
A task that they estimate will take them one hour takes three, and a project for which they allotted three days will take six to nine.
The problem is that most people don’t give themselves permission to be human. They expect themselves to be machines and think, “Ok, I can write 1,500 words an hour. I have a 15,000-word writing project so I should only need ten hours to complete it.”
We don’t take into account the variability of our performance on a day-to-day, hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute basis.
A task that takes you 90 minutes to complete one morning may take an entire day of concentrated effort depending on your emotional state, what you ate for breakfast and how you slept the night before.
Again, the key here is to work with reality instead of fighting it.
Considering the massive variability in our personal performance and productivity, we need to change the way that we agree to and approach different tasks.
And this is where the Law of Three comes into play.
Numerous studies have shown that employees are only productive for about 30 – 40% of their workday. And considering this, the Law of Three states that:
“Any task will take at least three times longer to complete than you assume.”
So, if you have a task that you assume will take you only one hour, schedule three hours to complete it. If you have a task that will take a week, schedule three.
The point of this exercise is to put constraints on yourself and avoid taking on more than you can handle.
After a few weeks or months of tracking your output, reviewing your days, and getting objective feedback on our performance, you will be able to more accurately assess the time required to complete certain tasks and you can slowly start to phase this particular practice out.
Try this out for at least the next 30 days. If you accomplish tasks quicker than anticipated, great! Again, the purpose of this practice is to bring a higher level of intentionality and objectivity into your planning so that you avoid burnout and overwhelm and can sustain peak performance not just for months and years, but decades.
Change That Up!