Imagine you’re about to start a new project. Confidently, you estimate that it will take just a couple of hours, perhaps an afternoon, to complete. Fast forward three days, and you’re still knee-deep in the task. What you’ve just experienced is a classic example of the planning fallacy, a cognitive bias that leads us to underestimate the time, costs, and risks of future actions, while overestimating the benefits.
First identified by psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979, the planning fallacy is pervasive in both our personal and professional lives. It’s why we often start assignments the night before they’re due, thinking we can finish them in a fraction of the time they actually require, and why large-scale projects frequently run over budget and beyond deadlines.
Part of the reason we fall into this trap is our tendency to focus optimistically on the future, driven by an inner belief in our efficiency and capability. We often neglect to factor in unforeseen challenges or past experiences that could temper our expectations. Instead, we envision an idealized scenario where everything goes smoothly.
To counteract the planning fallacy, it helps to adopt an outsider’s view. Look at your project as if you were an observer, and consider the time it took to complete similar tasks in the past. Buffer your estimates with extra time and resources to accommodate unexpected hurdles. By consciously acknowledging this bias, you can make more realistic plans and avoid the stress of unmet deadlines.