Break it down first: list the steps, then guess

Break it down first

‘Do the assignment’ fits on one line of a to-do list. Inside it are a dozen smaller jobs: find the question, reread your notes, look for sources, plan, write, fix the references, upload it. When you guess how long it will take, you’re guessing the line. The jobs inside it are easy to forget, especially the dull ones.

Unpacking means listing those jobs before you guess. You still make one guess for the whole task. The list gives that guess more to go on.

What the research found

In 2004, Kruger and Evans asked why people tend to guess too short for their own tasks. One reason, they thought, is that we don’t naturally break a task into parts when we guess. Across five experiments, people guessed how long everyday tasks would take, such as getting ready for a date, formatting a document and preparing food. Some listed the task’s parts first. Those people gave longer guesses, and in two of the experiments their guesses were also closer to the real time. In the last experiment, listing made a bigger difference for tasks with more parts.

A 2008 paper by Forsyth and Burt found something similar in three experiments. The time people set aside for a whole task was less than the times they gave its parts, added together.

Not every step adds time

Listing steps isn’t a button that adds minutes. In three studies, Hadjichristidis and colleagues found it depended on which steps were listed. Unusually slow steps made guesses longer. Unusually quick ones made them shorter. Ordinary steps, the ones you’d picture anyway, made no difference. So the list is most useful when it turns up the slow parts you’d skip over in your head: getting set up, finding things, waiting for a reply.

What about ADHD?

None of these studies were about ADHD, and we couldn’t find one that tested unpacking with ADHD. Judging time is harder with ADHD on average, at least in lab tests. A 2022 meta-analysis by Marx and colleagues pooled 55 studies and found more trouble judging short spans of time, often a few seconds or less. That’s a long way from an afternoon of homework, so treat unpacking as worth a try rather than proven for ADHD.

There’s also a practical reason it may suit ADHD, which is ours rather than a research finding. A big, vague task is hard to start. A list of steps answers ‘where do I begin?’, and the first step is often small enough to do now.

Try this week

Pick one task you’d normally guess in one go: an assignment, a form or a messy room. Write its steps as things you’d physically do. A handful is plenty. Include the boring parts, such as getting set up, finding files and waiting. Then make one guess for the whole task, and afterwards compare it with the real time. Note any step that took longer than you expected. If the week gets away from you, that’s fine too.

Steps first, then guess

You’ll need to be signed in and using the Full layout, with the to-do list showing. Turn on Guess, then see under Settings → What’s on screen.

1. In the to-do list, tap the task’s name to open its details. With no steps yet, it asks What’s the first thing you’d physically do? Type a step and press Enter. Keep going: the box now says Add a step. A task holds up to 12 steps.
2. Read the steps through. Then type the task’s name in What are you working on?, exactly as it reads in your list. Guess how long it will take: appears, with 15m, 30m, 45m, 1h and 2h. Tap one before you start.
3. Press Start on the task’s row. Only tasks in My Day have it: if the row shows My Day instead, press that first. Or tap it among the My Day tasks above Start focus, then press Start focus.
4. While the clock runs, you see the task and its next step. Step done ticks it off. Take as many runs as it needs, starting each the same way.
5. When the task is finished and no run is going, press Done with this task under the task box. Ticking off the to-do doesn’t close the guess. You’ll see something like ‘You guessed 30m. It took 52m.’

After three finished tasks, Your guesses shows your pattern, such as ‘Lately your tasks take about 1.6× your guess’. The steps don’t change how the timer counts: it adds up the runs named after the task. They change what you had in mind when you guessed. When a task runs long, ask which step did it. Put that kind of step on your next list. Guesses and tasks are private.

A detailed plan keeps you on time

It sounds right, but it depends on the kind of detail. In a 2003 paper by Buehler and Griffin, people asked to focus on a concrete plan for how they’d get a task done predicted they’d finish sooner. They didn’t finish any sooner, so their guesses ended up further off. One way to read it, which is ours rather than the paper’s: a plan pictures the task going smoothly, while unpacking lists everything the task holds, slow parts included. So list what’s in the task, not how you hope it will go.