It appears to me that awareness of what time it is, awareness of how long a task has taken, and ability to guess in advance how long a task will take are distinctly separate skills—it seems unwise to me to assume that progress at one of them will translate to increased ability with another.
This is based on the observation that I’m abysmally bad at the first of those (I’ve been known to gain and lose entire days, even when I’m paying attention in preparation for an upcoming event) and non-awesome at the second, but startlingly good at the last if I rely on the appropriate non-conscious estimate-generator. If I spontaneously say “I bet I can finish writing that piece of code in 20 minutes”, based on my track record it would actually be surprising for it to take less than 15 or more than 25, but ask me to take a shower that lasts no longer than 20 minutes and there’s something like a 50⁄50 chance I’ll be in there for 45.
It appears to me that awareness of what time it is, awareness of how long a task has taken, and ability to guess in advance how long a task will take are distinctly separate skills—it seems unwise to me to assume that progress at one of them will translate to increased ability with another.
This is based on the observation that I’m abysmally bad at the first of those (I’ve been known to gain and lose entire days, even when I’m paying attention in preparation for an upcoming event) and non-awesome at the second, but startlingly good at the last if I rely on the appropriate non-conscious estimate-generator. If I spontaneously say “I bet I can finish writing that piece of code in 20 minutes”, based on my track record it would actually be surprising for it to take less than 15 or more than 25, but ask me to take a shower that lasts no longer than 20 minutes and there’s something like a 50⁄50 chance I’ll be in there for 45.