How do you decide what you can and can’t accomplish during a summer? We often have big ideas but put too much pressure on ourselves to do an unreasonable amounts of work, which can lead us feeling disappointed when August rolls around.

While your instinct may be to estimate in terms of how much time different projects will take, humans are notoriously terrible at estimating time. Estimating by size or complexity can be a much better ways to think about the work logically. So try t-shirt sizing your projects!

Humans are notoriously terrible at estimating time.

Think about each project and how complex it is to complete, then assign each project a t-shirt size from Extra-Small to Extra-Large. So polishing up a revise and resubmit you are mostly finished with might be a XS, a article you want to write that includes doing all the data analysis and lit review work might be an XL. Finally, looking at the relative complexity of your projects, decide your priorities and select which you can focus on for the summer.

The projects you don’t select aren’t going anywhere and will be there when you have time to get back to them. But by taking them off the list and focusing on what you can realistically accomplish, you will be more likely to see progress on your goals!