An unfinished task grows larger at night when the energy to judge it accurately has gone.

Size is partly a function of how much you have left. Late in the evening a job you could do in forty minutes gets measured by a mind with no capacity to spare, and everything is weighed against that shortage, so it comes out enormous. The task is unchanged; the scales are tired. The same item at ten in the morning frequently turns out to be small.

When something feels overwhelming after dark, write it down and refuse to estimate it until the morning; give tomorrow the judging and tonight the rest, since one of those you can actually do now.