Cute Scheduling Trick from "Good Math, Bad Math"

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The Blog and... the Book! : Good Math, Bad Math:

"The exact publication date isn't set yet, but my schedule plans for a complete draft of the book by summer. (And I used the scheduling rules proposed by one of my favorite managers. He said that when a programmer gives you an estimate of how long something should take, multiply it by two and increase the unit. So if they say it'll take a day, assume two weeks. If they say a week, assume two months. In my experience, it's actually a really good predictor.)"

I wanted to mark down this cute scheduling trick, because I was going crazy trying to hunt it down.

Image by ASurroca via Flickr

I think this is a very fine rule for all creative work, not just programming. It could very well be a fundamental rule of scheduling.