How long will it take?

I read about a real estate agent who bought some nice framed prints to decorate the walls of the sales office, but thought it would take a day to hang all the prints, so kept putting it off.

The prints sat on the floor of the sales room for over a year, until once day he got sick of it and thought 'I'll just put one of these up this lunch time'.

Thirty-six minutes later, he had ALL of the prints up on the walls and the office looked great!

Inaccurately estimating the time it will take to do something can tempt us to procrastinate. We assume the task is much bigger and more harrowing than it will really be. We then spend many more hours and mental energy thinking about the task than it would take us to complete it.

Start today

Look at your 'to-do' list and make an estimate beside each item of how long it would realistically take you to complete it.

Bunch the quick and easy tasks together and add up the total time it will take to get these things done.

Find slots in your diary and schedule the tasks in, along with a reward for getting through them.

You might be surprised at how much easier and faster some things are to accomplish than you anticipated.