From Around The Web
The Planning Fallacy: “the tendency to underestimate the amount of time needed to complete a future task, due in part to the reliance on overly optimistic performance scenarios.”
–Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, 1979
The planning fallacy is a trap I’ve definitely fallen victim to many times. Very early in my career, I would underestimate how long it would take to finish a project and I would find myself working late to catch up on deadlines I over-promised. More recently, I hyped myself up with wishful thinking regarding a personal project I’ve been dreaming to complete. I told myself everything would run smoothly and just knew I would be done in no time. Weeks later I’m still pretty far from the finish line, hence the subject for this post.
With more experience and better awareness, one eventually learns how to plan better but sometimes it comes at a great cost. Missed deadlines, disrupted schedules, and financial consequences can be just a few examples of poor planning. After years of working in high-demand fast-paced settings, I’ve learned to become more realistic with setting goals and I always plan 10 steps ahead. Anyone that knows me understands that my mind explores the best-case and worst-case scenarios, including everything in-between.
I never knew this tendency to underestimate planning had a name until I discovered this article on Entrepreneur so I figured I’d share John Rampton’s suggestions on avoiding the planning fallacy. Read the full article here. If you have any tips or suggestions to share, leave a comment below.
Key Takeaways
1. Use data to your advantage
Track your performance or reference a similar project
2. Set realistic deadlines
Don’t set the deadline you like. Set a realistic deadline that will inspire you to follow through and meet the limits on time
3. Remember Murphy’s Law
“Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.”
–Captain Edward Aloysius Murphy Jr., American Aerospace Engineer
4. Use three-point estimations
Consider best-case, worst-case and most-likely scenarios and calculate the average by adding all three numbers and dividing by three
5. Try the “100 blocks a day” method by Tim Urban
Break up your time spent awake into 10-minute blocks. Assign each block of time with something you need to do that day before going to bed. This will allow you to visually see how you are spending your time and what items are non-negotiable and what’s flexible
6. Minimize distractions and overcome procrastination
Try to cut out all distractions but schedule small breaks using something like the Pomodoro Technique
