How long should each task take? If you don’t know, work will always feel harder than it needs to.
I avoided a dull but important admin task recently — there are far more fun things to do in August than fill out a form for your accountant. Until my accountant told me it would take less than fifteen minutes.
Unlike our factory counterparts, office workers rarely allocate time to tasks like this. Even when training new employees, we rarely tell them how long each job should take:
This shouldn’t take you more than 45 minutes — ask Gemma for help, she does it even quicker.
Two of us doing the same job might go about it very differently. One of us might take an hour to do something. Our switch-tasking, easily distracted colleague could faff around on it for far longer, then rush it at the deadline. This causes unnecessary stress for the rest of us.
Those of us who procrastinate hunt for a two-hour clear window to start something, not realising that just 30 minutes of focus would get it moving down the line to the person waiting for it.
Surprisingly, even workers on billable hours struggle with how long tasks should take. Projects vary, expectations are unclear, tracking systems are clunky. Their manager wonders what they do all day but doesn’t like to ask for fear of being called a micro-manager. Of course, it is their job to manage the workflow so they should know who is doing what to ensure a fair distribution of tasks.
From now on, give tasks a time label. Say how long each job should take. If you don’t know, then ask the person how long they think it will take to do something. It helps set boundaries and clarify expectations.
- Don’t spend more than half an hour on that.
- Next time we do a similar project, how can we make it quicker and easier?
- I need this today. When have you got time to do it? Will you have to drop something?
- It will take at least two hours to do justice to this, so I can’t do it until later in the week for you, is that OK?
And as we know that tasks expand to fill the time available, how about:
- You can finish work when you’ve done it.
Let me know if this helps you feel energised and in control of your time, not a victim of it.