Break a big task into subtasks before estimating and starting

Cost

Free. The breakdown itself takes 5 to 15 minutes.

What you get

When people estimate how long something will take, they don't split a task with several parts into pieces on their own. Writing a literature review, writing the discussion and formatting the references are really separate jobs. Listing the subtasks before estimating reduces the mistake of estimating too short, a mistake called the planning fallacy. Once it is split up, each small step becomes an action you can start right away, and procrastination drops too. The strongest predictors of procrastination in the research include dislike of the task and the task itself being pushed back.

Notes

How far to split: go by whether each subtask can be finished in one sitting. Splitting too finely also takes time. Also, the study by Kruger and Evans was checked only against its abstract for the direction of the result, and the specific percentages were not checked against the full text.

Evidence grade

B : Supported by research but without a precise number, or based on small or single studies.

Sources

1. Kruger, J., & Evans, M. (2004). If you don't want to be late, enumerate: Unpacking reduces the planning fallacy. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(5), 586–598. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2003.11.001
2. Steel, P. (2007). The nature of procrastination: A meta-analytic and theoretical review of quintessential self-regulatory failure. Psychological Bulletin, 133(1). https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.133.1.65

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