Work out your leave-by time
Log a few real times to find your own multiplier, then work backwards from when you need to arrive.
The short version
- Enter two or three tasks with what you predicted and what they actually took. The tool works out your personal multiplier (the amount your predictions tend to run short by) instead of asking you to predict better.
- Then name where you need to be and when, and list the hidden parts nobody counts: finding keys, the walk to the stop, the queue. The tool applies your multiplier and works backwards to a realistic leave-by time.
- This returns nothing about you. It rearranges the numbers you type and hands them back in a sentence you can act on.
People underestimate how long their own tasks will take, and they do it even when they know they have underestimated the same kind of task before. Knowing about the effect does not remove it. So this tool does not try to fix your sense of time, it puts the time outside your head, measures how far your predictions run short, and works backwards from the arrival rather than forwards from the departure.
Before you begin
Have in mind two or three recent tasks where you can honestly say both how long you thought they would take and how long they really took. Then have in mind one upcoming thing you need to arrive at on time. Nothing you type is saved.
Steps
Step 1 of 4
Your leave-by time
Copy it somewhere it will survive
Select the text below and copy it into whatever you already use, or set the alarm for the leave-by time right now. This page keeps nothing.
Two things to read off your own numbers
Look at your multiplier. If it is well above one, the useful move is not to try harder to predict, most people's estimates do not improve with practice. It is to keep applying the multiplier, and to set the alarm for leaving rather than for arriving.
And notice how much of the leave-by time came from the hidden parts rather than the journey itself. The journey is the number you already knew. The keys, the walk, and the queue are the part that was quietly eating your mornings.
Worth knowing. People underestimate how long their own tasks will take, and they do it even when they know they have underestimated the same kind of task before (Buehler, Griffin & Ross, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1994). The planning fallacy is well established and has been replicated across many task types. It is a general finding about people, not about any particular group. Working backwards from an arrival time, and applying a measured multiplier rather than trying to feel time more accurately, is a response to that finding rather than a claim of its own.
Nothing here is saved or sent anywhere. What you type exists only while this page is open.
Written for Thought Club as general guidance, not medical advice. Free to read, print, and share.