Trouble Estimating Time

I've been teaching watercolour classes for about a year now. Almost every class, I seem to underestimate the length of time it will take participants to complete their exercises or paintings. This leads to me making videos to guide participants or I add another day of classes.

Well I did it again for my apple workshop. I thought I could add more hours to each class but that won't help.

The confidence that led to my unrealistic estimates actually has a name—the planning fallacy—and it's something we all occasionally suffer from when estimating how long tasks and projects will take us to complete.   This lack of ability to estimate is likely attributed to my optimism and wanting to guide participants to complete a painting subject that will be interesting (more complex)  and allow them to learn different things.

For the current workshop, we could have focused on an apple and a simple background, but a number of apples on a tree branch is much more interesting.  Don't you agree?

In any event, the progress of participants is quite impressive and that's all that counts in the end.

Here is my demo painting in progress.

Have a great week,

Danielle