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Time — Is There a Way to Gain More for What You Want?
Can we make work work for us?
Have you ever thought this meeting could have been an email? My first job involved spending at least 5 hours of the day in meetings. Although the average time an individual can fully concentrate in a meeting is 13 minutes, the ‘urgent’ priorities my former boss set in the rapidly dwindling workday gave me invaluable insights into the misuse of time. Douglas Hofstadter, the noted polymath, came up with a law describing the problem of overestimating what we can do with limited hours:
“It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”
This is commonly known as the planning fallacy and is a cognitive bias that seems especially pertinent in the working world. Now if ever something proved this point, it was me looking up whether I was related to Douglas Hofstadter for a full 7 minutes while writing this article (in short, probably yes, but it’s too far back to be hopeful about my future children getting a Nobel prize). However, my situation is far from unique, it seems no matter the industry people are terrible at estimating time with 85% of projects not running on time or budget.
So knowing that we’re all susceptible to miscalculation and misuse of time, how do we use the tools available to…
