It’ll save your schedule.
I have a habit of being very optimistic when it comes to scheduling my day. It starts well, it’s quite easy to stick to an hour of X task, then 45 mins of Y task in the morning.
It’s after lunch that things can go a bit wonky for me. I think it’s also tricky for me to think that far into the future for some reason. I can imagine doing a task now, but somehow don’t quite believe I’ll have time for it later. That may be because I historically don’t stick to schedules or spend longer than I said I would, so I don’t trust myself.
Yesterday, I had accidentally scheduled the afternoon like this.
Lunch
Task A: 1pm – 2pm
Task B: 2.20 – 3pm
Where’d that 20 mins at 2pm come from?!
The best thing is I didn’t have anything planned for that 20 minutes, so at best it was a surprise break and at worst it was extra time to finish task A.
Guess what? Task A ended but needing EXACTLY 20 minutes extra.
Had I not had the accidental buffer, I would have gone over time, been a bit ‘afternoon tired’, the rest of the day could have lost structure and my productivity would have gone out the window.
Be ambitious with you scheduling, yes!
But also be realistic AND be tactical with how you set it up.
Give yourself some buffer.
