Your to-do list says 60%. You’re 32% done.

Picture a small project: opening a café. You’ve listed ten steps. Six are done — you picked a name, registered the business, opened a bank account, chose a till system, ordered signage and set up social accounts. Your app shows a satisfying 60%.

Now look at what’s left: sign the lease, fit out the counter and seating, hire two baristas, pass the health inspection. Those four steps are the café. The progress bar says you’re more than halfway there. You’re not.

Why box-counting flatters you

Most planners measure progress as tasks done ÷ tasks total. It’s simple, and it quietly assumes every task is the same size. Real projects are never like that. The quick jobs tend to get done first and the heavy ones get pushed back — a pattern researchers call “task completion preference” (KC, Staats, Kouchaki & Gino, 2020, studying doctors under heavy workload). So the percentage rises fastest exactly when the hardest work hasn’t been touched.

That matters because we plan around the number we see. A bar that reads 60% in week six says “relax”. The work says “you haven’t started yet”.

Weight each step by its hours

Give every step a rough time estimate. It doesn’t need to be precise — “about 2 hours” or “a couple of weekends” is enough. Then measure progress as hours done ÷ hours planned.

In the café example the six finished steps add up to 16 hours, and the whole plan is 50. That’s 32%. Less exciting, far more useful: it tells you two-thirds of the effort is still ahead.

Then compare it with time

A percentage on its own still doesn’t answer the real question, which is will I finish on time? For that you need a second number: how much of your time has passed. If you’re 32% through the hours and 50% through the calendar, you’re behind. If you’re 32% through the hours and 20% through the calendar, you’re ahead.

How to start, in any tool

1. List the steps for one goal.
2. Put a rough hour estimate next to each. Round freely.
3. Add up the hours of the finished steps and divide by the total.
4. Compare that with the share of your time that has passed.
5. Re-estimate when a step turns out bigger than you thought. That’s the plan working, not failing.

You can do this in a spreadsheet. MileStone does it for you: every step carries an hour estimate, habits linked to a goal add their time, and the goal shows one pacing verdict instead of a flattering bar.