Understanding and Supporting Daily Planning in Knowledge Work

Abstract

Daily planning habits and skills have an impact on workers’ productivity and job performance. While daily planning is essential for modern work, daily plans can often be challenging to execute. My PhD research has investigated the errors and challenges knowledge workers experience when planning their work day. A diary study was conducted with 20 academics as participants to learn how tasks are planned at the start of the day and which tasks are actually completed during the day. Results showed that while participants were good at estimating the duration of time-constrained tasks, they were not very good at estimating the duration of less time-constrained tasks (e.g. the time needed for email and coding tasks was underestimated, whereas the time needed for writing research and planning activities was overestimated). My future work aims to develop and test planning and scheduling (AI) tools to better support knowledge workers daily planning habits and overcome these time estimation biases in their work.