Don't plan everything out.
I just finished a massive day of work building a new shelving system for my parent's business that utilizes a lot of the wasted space before.
I haven't been super proficient in planning margin into my life, and I've had areas where I drastically underestimate the time or effort it takes to do certain projects. In my personal projects, it doesn't matter as much, but in the cases where it directly affects another person, planning margin into your task will give you wiggle room for life to happen.
For this shelving project, I decided to take that to heart and found my expected budget and added about 25% margin and materials to my total cost. This would account for things like unexpected prices, taxes, or additional supplies. I thought it was a bit difficult, not saying it could only be done at that higher cost; I was setting my expectations so that I would either come out as the expected cost or below.
In phycology, there is something called loss aversion where we do our utmost to avoid losing something. So if I were to promise a bit and fall short of the promise, I am taking away from the expected product. Whereas if I promise below my expected outcome, then I give something that wasn't expected.
In this project, I actually came under my expected budget by finding cheaper building materials that were more than sufficient for my need.
Key takeaways:
1) Don't plan out your every minute
2) Build in a 20% margin to your expected outcome
3) Falling short of a high promise is physiologically taking something away
3) With margin, you exceed or come in at your promise