I’ve had a bad record lately when it comes to figuring out how long something will take and scheduling the time appropriately. Everything that could go wrong has, zombie projects are overrunning my time, and I’m just not that good at estimating.
It makes sense though when you’re doing something you’ve never done before and hopefully most of your work gives you that opportunity, rather than being the same old all the time. I suppose the key is to give yourself enough slack in your schedule that you can handle overflows, but you’ve also gotta eat. My plan is to remove the sources of work that consistently lead to zombie and overrunning projects to try to have a better idea of how long a project will take. But really, a project is a lot like a living thing and sometimes we just need to take it where it needs us to go.