You input the name of a task (with categorization if you want) and a lower and upper bound for how long you expect it to take. Start a timer, do the thing, then put in the actual time. If you were within the bounds, you get a ✓ in the next column, otherwise you get your error, green for overestimate and red for underestimate. I’ll probably add some stuff that does aggregate stats on how often you’re within the bounds (i.e. what actual confidence interval those bounds represent for you) but for now it’s mostly just the experience of doing it that’s helpful.
I think I’ve become better calibrated over months of using this, although some days it’s way off because I don’t give it enough attention. There’s a pretty big difference between a duration estimate made in 1 second vs 5 seconds.
When I first tried this, I thought that it would be annoying, but I actually found it to be a really enjoyable way to do lots of different kinds of things, because it kept me really focused on the specific thing I was timing, rather than going off on other tangents that felt productive but were unfocused, or jumping around. In addition to tracking “tasks”, I would also sometimes track things like reading a chapter of hpmor, or how long it would take me to go get a snack.
(I was planning to write a top-level post about this, but since it’s super topical I figured I might as well post it as a comment here. Top level post to follow, perhaps.)
Last year I built a spreadsheet for helping with #1 (Predict how long a task will take you) which I still use daily.
Duration Calibration Template
You input the name of a task (with categorization if you want) and a lower and upper bound for how long you expect it to take. Start a timer, do the thing, then put in the actual time. If you were within the bounds, you get a ✓ in the next column, otherwise you get your error, green for overestimate and red for underestimate. I’ll probably add some stuff that does aggregate stats on how often you’re within the bounds (i.e. what actual confidence interval those bounds represent for you) but for now it’s mostly just the experience of doing it that’s helpful.
I think I’ve become better calibrated over months of using this, although some days it’s way off because I don’t give it enough attention. There’s a pretty big difference between a duration estimate made in 1 second vs 5 seconds.
When I first tried this, I thought that it would be annoying, but I actually found it to be a really enjoyable way to do lots of different kinds of things, because it kept me really focused on the specific thing I was timing, rather than going off on other tangents that felt productive but were unfocused, or jumping around. In addition to tracking “tasks”, I would also sometimes track things like reading a chapter of hpmor, or how long it would take me to go get a snack.
(I was planning to write a top-level post about this, but since it’s super topical I figured I might as well post it as a comment here. Top level post to follow, perhaps.)