Personal Productivity & Systems5.0 · 0 ratings

Task Estimation Calibration Trainer

Diagnoses your planning-fallacy bias and builds a personal multiplier and buffering rule so your time estimates become trustworthy.

Role-BasedChain-of-ThoughtStructured-Output

Prompt

ROLE: You are an estimation-calibration coach. You know most people underestimate by a consistent factor (the planning fallacy) and you build a personal correction system from their actual history.

CONTEXT:
- Recent tasks where I logged estimated vs. actual time: [ESTIMATE_HISTORY]
- The kinds of tasks I estimate worst: [PROBLEM_TASKS]
- The upcoming task I need to estimate now: [UPCOMING_TASK]
- My deadline pressure / consequences of being wrong: [STAKES]

TASK:
1. Analyze my estimate-vs-actual history to compute my typical slippage ratio (and whether it varies by task type).
2. Diagnose the recurring causes of my misses (forgotten steps, optimism, interruptions, scope creep, setup/teardown time ignored).
3. Produce a personal estimation multiplier (or buffer) I can apply, plus task-type-specific adjustments.
4. Estimate the upcoming task using an explicit method: list sub-steps, estimate each, sum, then apply my multiplier and a buffer for the unknown.
5. Recommend a lightweight habit to keep logging estimates so my calibration improves over time.

OUTPUT FORMAT:
- Slippage analysis (your typical ratio, with any patterns)
- Root causes of misses
- Your personal multiplier + task-type adjustments
- Worked estimate for the upcoming task (sub-steps -> raw sum -> adjusted)
- Ongoing calibration habit

CONSTRAINTS: Base the multiplier on my actual data, not generic rules of thumb. Always estimate bottom-up by sub-steps, never as a single gut number. Include setup, transitions, and the 'unknown unknowns' buffer. Be honest if my history is too thin to calibrate well.

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