Planning Fallacy
Notes
Claim
Planning fallacy is a type of Overestimating abilities blinds us to genuine risks bias where we greatly overestimate our ability to perform a task in a given deadline, or just our inability to be good predictors of the future, missing out problems that might arise along the way that would delay us.
Explanation
We are often too attached to our project that our desire to fulfill it makes us believe as if the project is easier than what it is, as if our desire changes something in reality.
This lowers our ability to plan well, perhaps making the entire process redundant or even harmful. The biases are so powerful in this case that even the Deadlines force action by adding consequences is not sufficient to save us. No matter how hard the deadline is, we would cross it regardless.
Why it matters
How to reduce planning fallacy:
- Margins - Knowing that you might be too optimistic in your planning, take large Margins. If you gave yourself a week, double it. If you gave yourself a budget, double it.
- Take a step back - Try to Zooming out gains perspective through mental distance, see previous cases of similar planning and how that turned out, try to see the project through another's eyes. What if someone else was in charge of this project, how long would it have taken them?
- Consult - Seek the help of your peers, try to find those who are unrelated to the project, that have no stakes in it's result, and get their honest perspective.
- Be the devils advocate - Try to Pre-mortem anticipates failure modes to enable preparation your project, acting as if it has already failed. This will allow you to come up with solutions and safe-guards that will save a lot of effort later on.
Examples
Supporters
Opposers
Unfortunately, even good planning is not fool proof. The more buffers we give ourselves, the more "enabling" we would become, because of the A task takes as much time as you give it, our task would stretch to match the amount of time and resources dedicated to it, leaving us exactly where we started.
Open questions
Visual
Overview
🔼Topic:: Overconfidence and Self-Assessment ↩️Origin:: 🔗Link::