Honestly Speaking
I have been noticing something for a while now. Over and over again. In every area of my life.
I make a plan, estimate the effort, and get started. And in the end it always took longer than expected.
Just this week alone: I wanted to write an article, planned an hour for it, and ended up sitting at my desk for two. I wanted to peel off what looked like a sticker from my trailer. The cover was printed on. Solvent, scrubbing, seven hours later done. I wanted to replace the brake discs and pads on my car. The brake piston had seized in the caliper, and the electronic parking brake refused to open. End result: new caliper, parts on order, brakes bled, significant extra time spent.
Three different things. The same pattern.
At some point you start asking yourself whether you are just bad at planning. Whether you leave too little buffer. Whether you are simply too optimistic.
My old driving instructor had a phrase for it that has never left my head. I wanted to quickly turn before an oncoming cyclist. Lost control of the clutch, stalled the car, dangerous situation. His reaction was brief:
“Quick and easy takes forever.”
While researching this article I came across a term I had not known before: the Planning Fallacy. Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky described it in 1979 [1]: people systematically underestimate the time required for their own tasks. Not because they plan badly. But because when estimating they picture the ideal scenario and ignore all the parameters they cannot know in advance.
The sticker peels right off. The article writes itself. The electronic parking brake goes into service mode and the disc and pad swap takes no time at all.
What we do not plan for are the things we only see once we are already in the middle of them. The cover that turns out to be printed. The thought that needs working out while writing. The piston that has seized.
In private life that is annoying. In professional life it gets expensive.
I know this from project work. Effort estimation is one of the hardest disciplines in development. Not because the people doing the estimating are incompetent. But because an estimate is always based on incomplete information. You estimate the part you know. The part you do not know you do not estimate, or only insufficiently.
The Planning Fallacy has two faces. Sometimes the parameters are missing that you only discover once you are already in it. Sometimes it is simply a lack of experience. My driving instructor was not commenting on the fact that I did not understand the physics of turning. He was pointing out that I lacked the experience to handle the clutch in that situation.
Both lead to the same result: the plan does not hold.
Knowing that this pattern has a name and is scientifically documented has taken something from me. The thought that it might just be me.
The consequence for me is clear: I will factor the Planning Fallacy in as a fixed variable from now on. That means taking on less, planning more time per task, and being more honest about what is actually achievable in a day.
Quick and easy takes forever.
And yet every time I find myself hoping that this time it will go exactly as planned. As Hannibal from the A-Team used to say in pretty much every episode: “I love it when a plan comes together.”
[1] Kahneman, D. & Tversky, A. (1979). Intuitive Prediction: Biases and Corrective Procedures. Referenced from: Wikipedia, Planning Fallacy
In many companies, this is exactly where unnecessary time losses and structural problems arise. Often this goes unnoticed for a long time — until projects start to stall.
