Why Your Important Work Isn't Getting Done

How often have you gotten to the end of your day or week only to realize that the work you consider to be most important still isn't done?

Based on the experience of the people I coach, I’m willing to bet the answer is: almost every week.

Not the best feeling is it?

And what does “important” mean, anyway? For the purpose of this discussion, let’s say that important work moves you ahead in your career and life, typically to meet longer-term goals.

So how do you repeatedly end up in this position, where you’re not making consistent progress towards your goals?

You have less time than you think

No, I’m not saying that you’re living in an alternate dimension where the day is less than 24 hours long. I know it can sometimes feel that way. Probably most of the time based on the lives of the busy people I usually coach.

What I’m trying to say is that you may assume that you have more hours available to you in a day or week to focus on that important work than are actually available to you.

You’ve likely discounted small, repetitive tasks

Your work and life are filled with many small, repeating ‘tasks’. They’re so ingrained into your daily and weekly rhythms and routines that you may not be aware of them as tasks that need to get done and that actually take time. But they are and they do.

Think about an average week outside work. How much time do you spend doing things like planning and preparing meals, cleaning up after meals, grocery shopping, caring for a pet, making calls to service providers, paying bills, making your bed, making someone else’s bed, straightening up your house, doing laundry, exercising, taking a shower, brushing your teeth, using the bathroom, winding down before bed? You name it. This list is already long, and it’s hardly exhaustive. And I haven’t even mentioned the significant amount of time you likely spend watching your favorite Netflix shows.

Go through the same thought experiment for work. How much time do you spend preparing for and participating in mandatory or regularly scheduled meetings, processing email, complying with administrative requirements, and commuting if you have a commute?

You haven't accounted for your time ‘overhead’

Here’s my challenge for you:

Make a list of all the repetitive and routine things you do in a day and in a week. For just one week, keep track of how much time these small, repetitive tasks take.

Track this however you like. Do it with pen and paper in your favorite notebook, set up a simple spreadsheet, use a task manager or online time tracker, or create blocks of time on your calendar that match up with each of these tasks or groups of similar tasks.

In addition to the small, repetitive tasks, make note of all of the other non-discretionary commitments you might have in a week.

You should also note how long you’re sleeping, which is a helpful thing to track in any case.

When you get to the end of the week, you should have a good sense of your time ‘overhead’. This is the time that’s unavailable to complete discretionary work — you know, the things you do when you’re able to ask the question: What should I be focusing on today? In other words, the important things.

You probably have about six hours a day — at most — for important work

If you’ve accepted my challenge, tracked your time, and then added up your time overhead, you’re ready to face the somewhat grim reality of how much time you actually have remaining for discretionary tasks. These are the tasks that aren’t a foregone conclusion in your week. These are the tasks that you likely consider important, moving you forward in work and life, closer to achieving your goals.

What’s left after you subtract your time ‘overhead’ from 24 hours? It could be around six hours, maybe less. That's the time you have to work with.

  
None of this is rocket science, but it may reveal something that you’ve always known but weren’t quite able to get your head around -- the answer to the question: Where does all the time go?

What’s left after you subtract your time ‘overhead’ from 24 hours? It could be around six hours, maybe less. That's the time you have to work with.

No wonder the days and weeks always seem too short. No wonder you’ve made less progress than you expected on some of the important work in your career and life.

And not to be a total downer, but there’s more bad news.

You’re probably overly optimistic

I still fall victim to this trap all the time, and I’m acutely aware of the problem. When you consider how long a task might take, you have a tendency to underestimate the amount of time the task will actually take — by a lot.

Even minor tasks take longer than you think

Let’s consider an email. One that is related to one of your more important projects or goals. You probably want to get it just right and put in a little more effort and care than your average email.

How long do you think it might take to write this email? A minute? Two minutes? Five minutes? I’m willing to bet that it will take more.

The next time you have to compose a consequential email, something related to an important project or goal, time yourself. When I’ve challenged clients to do this, or to recall how much time they’ve spent, the answer is more like 15 minutes, 20 minutes, or 30 minutes.

Anything that takes thought, planning, research, editing, and proofing is going to take more time than you think. So will anything that requires coordinating or communicating with other people. One exchange turns into two, which turns into three. People’s plans and minds change. Issues arise. Technology fails. The reasons are endless.

I’m willing to bet that even some of your texts and DMs take longer than you think after you’ve reconsidered a word or two and found just the right emojis to communicate the highly nuanced and entertaining message you intend to deliver.

The next time you have to engage in any work that requires the kind of thought and attention I’ve described above, try timing it. I’m willing to bet more minutes go by than you would have first estimated. I’ll bet you spend more time processing email in an average day or week than you think.

Track it— just for a day. I think you’ll be surprised. Shocked even.

You might not account for a learning curve

Most of the people I coach are intelligent, quick, and highly capable. Things come easily to them. When faced with a new challenge, like a task they’ve never done before, they tend to be optimistic about their ability to complete the task in a reasonable amount of time.

A little optimism is always a good thing.

The problem is — they’re often overly optimistic. Maybe they’ll be able to complete the task at hand in the ‘reasonable’ amount of time they first estimated — but on the second or even third attempt, not the first. The first attempt includes a learning curve, and they likely don't account for it.

And you may not be accounting for the ‘margin’ in your day

There’s a final consideration when it comes to understanding where all the time in your day and week goes. Some of your time can’t be assigned to a specific task, meeting, or obligation.

It just evaporates.

Again, I’m not suggesting that there’s some parallel time-sucking universe (although there could be — I think I probably saw that on The Twilight Zone at some point). I am highlighting though that the small increments of time in between discrete tasks and obligations add up.

As these small non-task time increments take place, they may seem insignificant. Stopping to pour yourself a cup of coffee, going to the bathroom after you drink that cup of coffee, looking out the window for a few seconds after you’ve heard a loud noise, going to retrieve that Amazon package that was left on your stoop or porch before it starts to rain, taking a few moments to check social media. The possibilities are endless, and these small increments of time add up. Maybe to a couple or even a few hours a day.

You need to anticipate that this margin of difficult-to-track time is going to be part of your day, and you need to account for it when you plan what you think you can get done. Or you’ll consistently find yourself an hour or two short each and every day.

You might be tempted to reduce this margin. My advice: Don’t try.

Okay — if you’re spending an hour every day checking social media, then try to reduce it. In general, though, you need some margin in your day to keep you sane and to keep you from burning out. Figure out what’s right for you, and then plan for it. 

Conclusion

I admit it. This post has been a little darker than I might have originally anticipated. So much for planning, right?

I think the whole point is to identify a flaw in the approach that many people take to planning important work. But a potentially depressing scarcity of time — newly appreciated — can also be a source of motivation.

Plan to:

1. Get a handle on your time overhead
2. Be more realistic when you plan how much time a task will take to complete, especially one that's new to you
3. Remember to account for margin in your day

Then you should be able to generate more accurate estimates of how long it will take to achieve important work in the pursuit of longer-term goals. And if you repeatedly achieve goals in the amount of time you had originally estimated, you'll become more confident as a result.