All day isn't enough (but it's still plenty)

I’ve had all day to write, and it isn’t enough.

I haven’t actually spent all day writing, but I’ve spent a great deal of time on it. I started by writing out by hand, and now I’m typing out what I wrote so I can edit it more easily . . . and it’s taking so much longer than I expected.

There’s something called the planning fallacy, which is the notion that things take longer than we estimate them to. Part of this may be that as soon as we have an estimate of the time something will take, some internal part of us extends whatever we’re trying to do to take longer than that.

I know if I’m trying to leave for something in the morning, often I’ll be pushing right up against when I need to leave, with no time to spare—regardless of when I got up, or how many things I did so far in the morning.

That is to say, I’ll be just as rushed on a day I woke up early and had plenty of time, because I’ll take a longer shower, and cook breakfast, and maybe do a few other things—whereas on a day I’m short on time, I’ll cut whatever I can . . . but only to get to the point where I’m still a little late; rarely to the point that I’m actually comfortably on time, or that I’m severely late.

So maybe because I gave myself all day to write I automatically made this into a bigger project than I intended in the first place.

At the same time, it was going to take a certain amount of time regardless, and I’m glad to be doing it in a way I’m happy with the results. So maybe sometimes the answer is to just let things take as long as they’re gonna take, and not try to put a box around them.

Now I think about it, when I do things that way, they still get done—and I have a much pleasanter time doing them.

I think I’ll stop on this project for tonight, and work on it some more tomorrow—and if it takes all day, so be it.