We prioritize tasks based on our return on investment (ROI). If we undertake a task that we think should take one day to complete and we find ourselves still working on it two days later, it is time to reevaluate our efforts.
For the most part, human beings are all poor estimators. Remember the last time you said it would only take an hour to cut the grass? Then of course the mower wouldn’t start or the pull cord broke. Before you knew it, you had burned through an entire afternoon.
We always consider the best case scenario when estimating, which is seldom the case in reality. If we can’t reliably estimate a small, hour-length task, imagine how many things can go wrong during a month long project.
When we end up spending more time than we thought, the natural tendency is to rationalize that we have already invested so much time into the project that we can’t give up until it’s finished. This is what is known as the sunk cost bias and has killed many an Everest climber.
If you exceed the estimated task assignment, it is always a good idea to get a third party’s opinion about continuing. The ROI says do it, provided it would only take one day to complete. However, now that you are two days in, is there still an acceptable ROI? Is there something you’re missing that a third party can shed light on? Are you peeling away too many layers of the onion and losing focus of the actual goal?
I recently fell into this trap myself when I was writing a white paper. I estimated the task to take about a day to complete. However after working on it for several days and knowing the task was not yet complete, I shipped off the draft to a few colleges to get their opinion. The result was a refocus on a subset of the goal that took very little additional time to complete. This approach effectively put the bigger effort of the paper to bed since the ROI was no longer worthwhile.
It is not a failure to quit. In fact, it may be the right thing to do. If you spent more time than it was worth, it may be time to quit.
Do you continue to work on a project when it exceeds your initial estimate of effort?
