[Nadya]

I use my best judgement to estimate the time the task will take. I then double that number and report that as my estimate. For times great than one month - multiple by a time and a half instead.

One month? No, six weeks. Two hours? No, four hours.

The reality is typically somewhere between the two numbers. So the estimate remains fairly accurate and most things are finished ahead of schedule.

There are too many variables that cannot be accounted for when giving an estimate. How often am I going to get interrupted? Is there going to be legacy code that causes a bug to surface and has to be refactored? Etc.