Think about the last task you completed. Did it take you around the time you’d estimated? Probably not. 
Our perceptions of our available time, our abilities, and any roadblocks we may hit are greatly skewed. This is a phenomenon called the planning fallacy and it happens to professionals at all levels and in every occupation. What can we do along the way to keep us on target and help us meet our goals?

The Planning Fallacy

Research shows that we often underestimate the time and obstacles involved in completing a task even when it directly contradicts our past experiences. 
This can be explained by our optimism bias — our natural tendency to believe that the future will somehow be better than the past.

Optimism Bias

<ul>
<li>The next time you find yourself struggling to estimate, ask: How much time and effort have similar tasks required in the past?</li>
<li> Schedule buffer time: Keep in mind that there will always be factors outside of your control, and moreover, you may very well be overestimating your capabilities.</li>
<li>Commit early and publicly: Give yourself a little bit of external commitment pressure in order to not leave all of your work to the last minute.</li>
<li>Assume the worst: Start by imagining what will go wrong before it actually does. By doing so, you’ll be better able to foresee potential (if unlikely) issues. And you’ll be equipped to develop a suitable backup plan as a preventative measure.</li>
</ul>

Overcome the Planning Fallacy

<img src="https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2022/01/A_Jan22_05_1255034217.jpg" width="630" height="354"><div class="caption" dir="ltr">
				HBR Staff/Getty Images/MirageC
		</div><div more-caption="more" close-caption="close" dir="ltr">
		Summary.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
		Think about the last task you completed. Did it take you around the time you’d estimated? Probably not. Our perceptions of our available time, our abilities, and any roadblocks we may hit are greatly skewed. This is a phenomenon called the planning...<button dir="ltr">more</button>
	</div><img src="https://hbr.org/resources/images/article_assets/2020/10/Ascend_Logo_2020_2x.png" alt="Ascend logo" width="105" height="25">Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend <a href="https://hbr.org/insight-center/ascend" dir="ltr">here</a>.Imagine: You wake up one morning, and your head pops off the pillow in a panic. That long-awaited report you’ve been chipping away at — ever so slowly — is due in three days.A cold sweat settles on your skin as you sit down to crank out a report that will probably fall short of everyone’s expectations. You definitely need more time to work on this. You envision your boss shaking their head, arms folded in disapproval, and wince.Ugh. How on earth did you let this happen?Now picture this: That due date is a month in the future.You have so much more time. What a relief — and now you can sleep in!But wait. Before you hit the snooze button and let your cortisol levels fall, you need to get to the bottom of this career-disrupting phenomenon — or you’ll be doomed to repeat it.<h2>The Planning Fallacy</h2>No one intentionally sets out on a new project thinking it’s NOT going to go as planned — and yet it happens again and again. Why do so many of us fall into this trap? Our perceptions of our available time, our abilities, and any roadblocks we may hit are greatly skewed. This is a phenomenon called the planning fallacy, and it happens to professionals at all levels and in every occupation.The planning fallacy starts with wishful thinking. Minor (or even major) delays aren’t factored in. Postponing work doesn’t seem disastrous, at first. But because we tend to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task, along with any associated risks and unanticipated costs, we unwittingly place ourselves in last-minute, or worse, past-deadline scenarios.<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.67.3.366" dir="ltr">Research</a> shows that we often underestimate the time and obstacles involved in completing a task even when it directly contradicts our past experiences. This can be explained by our optimism bias — our natural tendency to believe that the future will somehow be better than the past.Both terms (“planning fallacy” and “optimism bias”) were coined by psychologists <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/planning-fallacy/" dir="ltr">Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979</a>, whose work gave rise to the field of behavioral economics. In 2002, Kahneman received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their research. (Tversky had passed away and the award isn’t given posthumously.)To learn more about the planning fallacy, how pervasive it is, and how to possibly overcome it, I reached out to expert researchers Filippos Papakonstantinou (The Business School, King’s College London)&nbsp;and Jonathan Parker (MIT Sloan School of Management), who published a <a href="https://filippospapakonstantinou.com/TimeInconsistentBeliefs.pdf" dir="ltr">paper</a> on misplanning, procrastination, and commitment with Markus Brunnermeier of Princeton University.“We all try to take actions that will lead to probabilistically improved outcomes in the future, and that both motivates us today and makes us feel better,” Parker explained.&nbsp;What does this look like in practice? Papakonstantinou offered this example: Say you have a piece of work to complete and three days to get it done. Rather than correctly estimate, based on your previous experience,&nbsp;that the work will take, say, a total of 12 hours to complete, you “dream” that it will <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/optimism-bias/" dir="ltr">only take eight hours</a>, which immediately cheers you up. So, you plan to enjoy yourself on the first day and do four hours of work on each of the following days. But, surprise, when the last day rolls around, you wind up having to work longer than expected.“The planning fallacy leads to you having to cram in the end and do way more than you’d anticipated,” he said. “You end up having to overwork close to your deadline and possibly even miss it, due to holding optimal beliefs about what you could realistically accomplish and ignoring the many factors outside your control.”<h2>Can we overcome the planning fallacy?</h2>According to Parker, even those who have studied the planning fallacy are susceptible to it. It’s an unavoidable phenomenon. So, what can we do along the way to keep us on target and help us meet our goals?The researchers have a few suggestions.<h3>Take the outside view.</h3><div dir="ltr"> 
Daniel Kahneman&nbsp;<a href="https://trickle.app/drip/16304-taking-the-outside-view-can-overcome-optimism-and-provide-a-more-realistic-assessment/" dir="ltr">calls</a> this “a cure” for the planning fallacy.&nbsp;The inside view is the way people usually think about decisions: subjectively, based on their own experience, preferences, and personal biases.&nbsp;In contrast, the outside view is grounded in objectivity, data, and statistics. 
</div>The next time you find yourself procrastinating, ask yourself: How much time and effort have similar tasks required in the past?If the task is completely new to you, do your research. Does your work mirror that of another firm? Check to see if there is publicly available, quantifiable information about the time and costs involved in those projects. The internet is your friend.Alternatively, you could ask a colleague to help with the estimate to <a href="https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-estimate-time/" dir="ltr">remove your own biases</a>. “Every project that one starts, one thinks: ‘Okay, this can’t be that hard. It actually looks pretty easy,’” Parker said. “It’s very useful to kick the idea around at lunch with a colleague, to see if they can find holes and push back on your optimism.”Experts, this goes for you, too. Underestimating the time required is not a newbie mistake! The challenge lies in balancing your optimism bias with realism.<h3>Commit early and publicly.</h3><div dir="ltr"> 
The more you put things off, the worse your problem becomes. That’s where committing yourself to early action becomes valuable. “The idea is to give yourself a little bit of external commitment pressure in order to not leave all of your work to the last minute,” Parker said. 
</div>Papakonstantinou suggests exploring commitment devices, or external elements that place constraints upon you, restricting your set of available choices.Consider this commitment device: Gather all the resources you need to finish your work offline. Then ask your roommate or partner to disable the WiFi (yes, ouch) and to not reinstate the connection until you emerge from your desk, with your task completed.Preventing the temptation of surfing the web kept you from being distracted and procrastinating further. (Your future self will be grateful you did.)You can work on “programming” your brain, too. <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/todd_rogers/files/beyond_good_intentions_-_prompting_people.pdf" dir="ltr">Research</a> shows that&nbsp;by setting “if-then” plans, also known <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/615107/summary" dir="ltr">“implementation intentions,”</a> you can counteract the planning fallacy and reduce your chances of procrastination. The structure is simple:IF [specific situation occurs], THEN I will [take this action].For example, if I find myself aimlessly researching close to noon instead of writing, I will break for a 30-minute lunch to get re-energized and refocused. Essentially, the more specific you are about when, where, and what you aim to do — and the more plans you set in place to boost your willpower — the more likely you are to follow through.<h3>Schedule “buffer time.”</h3><div dir="ltr"> 
Keep in mind that there will always be factors outside of your control, and moreover, you may very well be <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/planning-fallacy/" dir="ltr">overestimating your capabilities</a>. To ensure a more realistic deadline, take your original estimate and increase it by 25%. If you think a new feature launch will take four weeks, set aside an extra week to allow for delays. Then add intermittent milestones (think of them as mini deadlines) to keep you on track along the way. 
</div>Tech tools can help you stick to this practice. Setting up mobile alerts, using reminder apps like <a href="https://www.dueapp.com/" dir="ltr">Due</a> or <a href="https://todoist.com/" dir="ltr">Todoist</a>, or even enlisting a <a href="https://bossasaservice.life/" dir="ltr">virtual accountability partner</a>, can be useful.You can also use your calendar to keep you on track. Block out hours to do focused work on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, for example. Consider setting up weekly check-ins with external stakeholders or teammates to hold you accountable. (Suddenly any available time slots are looking good for finishing this project!) When — not if — you run into issues, having blocks saved in advance will help you move forward on schedule.<div>
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 A weekly newsletter to help young professionals find their place in the working world and realize their personal and career goals. 
 </div><h3>Assume the worst.</h3><div dir="ltr"> 
Sometimes it pays to be a pessimist. For your next important task, start by assuming its demise. That’s right: This approach is called a pre-mortem, and like its popular project management twin, the post-mortem, it involves reflecting, only this time you’re reflecting on what might happen as opposed to what already has. 
</div>This strategy involves imagining your own failure or determining what will go wrong before it actually does. By doing so, you’ll be better able to foresee potential (if unlikely) issues. And you’ll be equipped to develop a suitable backup plan as a preventative measure.Let’s go back to the example of that report you might be putting off. Instead of waiting until the week it’s due to get started, conduct a pre-mortem when it’s first assigned — three months in advance. Identify the ways it could get derailed: You might get pulled into other projects; you might forget to block time for it in your calendar; you might let day-to-day minutiae (ahem, constant inbox refreshing) sidetrack you. Now that you know what issues may pop up, you can actively try to avoid them.“Pre-mortems are helpful because they walk you through the process and discipline the natural tendency to be optimistic by considering how something will go awry,” Parker said. “This goes beyond the way an individual might choose to discipline themselves based on their own personal costs of missing the deadline (reputational damage, losing their job, etc.). You’re effectively forcing them to be more realistic than they would naturally be, and that’s a very useful thing for the workplace when timely completion is important.”While it is impossible to eliminate the planning fallacy from your life, you can strategically manage its existence. Don’t let the planning fallacy derail your credibility. Keep on dreaming big and bolster your plans with a hefty dose of evidence-based realism. Your conscience (and those who depend on your good work) will thank you for it.<UL><LI><author-avatar data-url="" data-author-name="Kristi DePaul" data-js-target="author-avatar">
					KD
				</author-avatar><div dir="ltr">
					
						<a href="https://hbr.org/search?term=kristi%20depaul&amp;search_type=search-all" dir="ltr">Kristi DePaul</a>&nbsp;is a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kdepaul/" dir="ltr">writer, speaker and global citizen</a> who is passionate about technology and education as vehicles for upward social mobility and access to greater opportunities. She has written over 250 articles and blog posts on the remote work landscape, and her work has been cited in research reports from international think tanks and universities. She is founder and principal at Nuanced, a thought leadership firm focused on the future of learning and the future of work, and serves as CEO of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.founders.marketing/" dir="ltr">Founders Marketing</a>, a fully remote content marketing company. She earned a master’s degree from the H. John Heinz III College of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University.
					
		</div></LI></UL>

It’s called “the planning fallacy” and we all fall victim to it.

Stashed ideas

Where your work meets your life. See more from Ascend <a href="https://hbr.org/insight-center/ascend">here </a>.

Imagine: You wake up one morning, and your head pops off the pillow in a panic. That long-awaited report you’ve been chipping away at — ever so slowly — is due in three days.

A cold sweat settles on your skin as you sit down to crank out a report that will probably fall short of everyone’s expectations. You definitely need more time to work on this. You envision your boss shaking their head, arms folded in disapproval, and wince.

Ugh. How on earth did you let this happen?

Now picture this: That due date is a month in the future.

You have so much more time. What a relief — and now you can sleep in!

But wait. Before you hit the snooze button and let your cortisol levels fall, you need to get to the bottom of this career-disrupting phenomenon — or you’ll be doomed to repeat it.

No one intentionally sets out on a new project thinking it’s NOT going to go as planned — and yet it happens again and again. Why do so many of us fall into this trap? Our perceptions of our available time, our abilities, and any roadblocks we may hit are greatly skewed. This is a phenomenon called the planning fallacy, and it happens to professionals at all levels and in every occupation.

The planning fallacy starts with wishful thinking. Minor (or even major) delays aren’t factored in. Postponing work doesn’t seem disastrous, at first. But because we tend to underestimate how long it will take to complete a task, along with any associated risks and unanticipated costs, we unwittingly place ourselves in last-minute, or worse, past-deadline scenarios.

<a href="https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0022-3514.67.3.366">Research </a>shows that we often underestimate the time and obstacles involved in completing a task even when it directly contradicts our past experiences. This can be explained by our optimism bias — our natural tendency to believe that the future will somehow be better than the past.

Both terms (“planning fallacy” and “optimism bias”) were coined by psychologists <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/planning-fallacy/">Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979 </a>, whose work gave rise to the field of behavioral economics. In 2002, Kahneman received the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for their research. (Tversky had passed away and the award isn’t given posthumously.)

To learn more about the planning fallacy, how pervasive it is, and how to possibly overcome it, I reached out to expert researchers Filippos Papakonstantinou (The Business School, King’s College London) and Jonathan Parker (MIT Sloan School of Management), who published a <a href="https://filippospapakonstantinou.com/TimeInconsistentBeliefs.pdf">paper </a>on misplanning, procrastination, and commitment with Markus Brunnermeier of Princeton University.

“We all try to take actions that will lead to probabilistically improved outcomes in the future, and that both motivates us today and makes us feel better,” Parker explained.

What does this look like in practice? Papakonstantinou offered this example: Say you have a piece of work to complete and three days to get it done. Rather than correctly estimate, based on your previous experience,  that the work will take, say, a total of 12 hours to complete, you “dream” that it will <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/optimism-bias/">only take eight hours </a>, which immediately cheers you up. So, you plan to enjoy yourself on the first day and do four hours of work on each of the following days. But, surprise, when the last day rolls around, you wind up having to work longer than expected.

“The planning fallacy leads to you having to cram in the end and do way more than you’d anticipated,” he said. “You end up having to overwork close to your deadline and possibly even miss it, due to holding optimal beliefs about what you could realistically accomplish and ignoring the many factors outside your control.”

According to Parker, even those who have studied the planning fallacy are susceptible to it. It’s an unavoidable phenomenon. So, what can we do along the way to keep us on target and help us meet our goals?

The researchers have a few suggestions.

Daniel Kahneman <a href="https://trickle.app/drip/16304-taking-the-outside-view-can-overcome-optimism-and-provide-a-more-realistic-assessment/">calls </a>this “a cure” for the planning fallacy. The inside view is the way people usually think about decisions: subjectively, based on their own experience, preferences, and personal biases. In contrast, the outside view is grounded in objectivity, data, and statistics.

The next time you find yourself procrastinating, ask yourself: How much time and effort have similar tasks required in the past?

If the task is completely new to you, do your research. Does your work mirror that of another firm? Check to see if there is publicly available, quantifiable information about the time and costs involved in those projects. The internet is your friend.

Alternatively, you could ask a colleague to help with the estimate to <a href="https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-estimate-time/">remove your own biases </a>. “Every project that one starts, one thinks: ‘Okay, this can’t be that hard. It actually looks pretty easy,’” Parker said. “It’s very useful to kick the idea around at lunch with a colleague, to see if they can find holes and push back on your optimism.”

Experts, this goes for you, too. Underestimating the time required is not a newbie mistake! The challenge lies in balancing your optimism bias with realism.

The more you put things off, the worse your problem becomes. That’s where committing yourself to early action becomes valuable. “The idea is to give yourself a little bit of external commitment pressure in order to not leave all of your work to the last minute,” Parker said.

Papakonstantinou suggests exploring commitment devices, or external elements that place constraints upon you, restricting your set of available choices.

Consider this commitment device: Gather all the resources you need to finish your work offline. Then ask your roommate or partner to disable the WiFi (yes, ouch) and to not reinstate the connection until you emerge from your desk, with your task completed.

Preventing the temptation of surfing the web kept you from being distracted and procrastinating further. (Your future self will be grateful you did.)

You can work on “programming” your brain, too. <a href="https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/todd_rogers/files/beyond_good_intentions_-_prompting_people.pdf">Research </a>shows that by setting “if-then” plans, also known <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/615107/summary">“implementation intentions,” </a>you can counteract the planning fallacy and reduce your chances of procrastination. The structure is simple:

IF [specific situation occurs], THEN I will [take this action].

For example, if I find myself aimlessly researching close to noon instead of writing, I will break for a 30-minute lunch to get re-energized and refocused. Essentially, the more specific you are about when, where, and what you aim to do — and the more plans you set in place to boost your willpower — the more likely you are to follow through.

Keep in mind that there will always be factors outside of your control, and moreover, you may very well be <a href="https://thedecisionlab.com/biases/planning-fallacy/">overestimating your capabilities </a>. To ensure a more realistic deadline, take your original estimate and increase it by 25%. If you think a new feature launch will take four weeks, set aside an extra week to allow for delays. Then add intermittent milestones (think of them as mini deadlines) to keep you on track along the way.

Tech tools can help you stick to this practice. Setting up mobile alerts, using reminder apps like <a href="https://www.dueapp.com/">Due </a>or <a href="https://todoist.com/">Todoist </a>, or even enlisting a <a href="https://bossasaservice.life/">virtual accountability partner </a>, can be useful.

You can also use your calendar to keep you on track. Block out hours to do focused work on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, for example. Consider setting up weekly check-ins with external stakeholders or teammates to hold you accountable. (Suddenly any available time slots are looking good for finishing this project!) When — not if — you run into issues, having blocks saved in advance will help you move forward on schedule.

Sometimes it pays to be a pessimist. For your next important task, start by assuming its demise. That’s right: This approach is called a pre-mortem, and like its popular project management twin, the post-mortem, it involves reflecting, only this time you’re reflecting on what might happen as opposed to what already has.

This strategy involves imagining your own failure or determining what will go wrong before it actually does. By doing so, you’ll be better able to foresee potential (if unlikely) issues. And you’ll be equipped to develop a suitable backup plan as a preventative measure.

Let’s go back to the example of that report you might be putting off. Instead of waiting until the week it’s due to get started, conduct a pre-mortem when it’s first assigned — three months in advance. Identify the ways it could get derailed: You might get pulled into other projects; you might forget to block time for it in your calendar; you might let day-to-day minutiae (ahem, constant inbox refreshing ) sidetrack you. Now that you know what issues may pop up, you can actively try to avoid them.

“Pre-mortems are helpful because they walk you through the process and discipline the natural tendency to be optimistic by considering how something will go awry,” Parker said. “This goes beyond the way an individual might choose to discipline themselves based on their own personal costs of missing the deadline (reputational damage, losing their job, etc.). You’re effectively forcing them to be more realistic than they would naturally be, and that’s a very useful thing for the workplace when timely completion is important.”

While it is impossible to eliminate the planning fallacy from your life, you can strategically manage its existence. Don’t let the planning fallacy derail your credibility. Keep on dreaming big and bolster your plans with a hefty dose of evidence-based realism. Your conscience (and those who depend on your good work) will thank you for it.

<ul><li>KD <div><a href="https://hbr.org/search?term=kristi%20depaul&search_type=search-all">Kristi DePaul </a> is a <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/kdepaul/">writer, speaker and global citizen </a>who is passionate about technology and education as vehicles for upward social mobility and access to greater opportunities. She has written over 250 articles and blog posts on the remote work landscape, and her work has been cited in research reports from international think tanks and universities. She is founder and principal at Nuanced, a thought leadership firm focused on the future of learning and the future of work, and serves as CEO of <a href="http://www.founders.marketing/">Founders Marketing </a>, a fully remote content marketing company. She earned a master’s degree from the H. John Heinz III College of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University. </div> </li> </ul>

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career

This Is Why You Keep Missing Deadlines

The Planning Fallacy

Optimism Bias

Overcome the Planning Fallacy

IDEAS ABOUT

MORE LIKE THIS

Our Brains Make Us Way Too Optimistic About Meeting Deadlines

What Is the Planning Fallacy and How To Beat It Down (9 Useful Tips)

Three Simple Rules For Managing Deadlines

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

Bite-sized knowledgeto upgradeyour career

This Is Why You Keep Missing Deadlines

The Planning Fallacy

Optimism Bias

Overcome the Planning Fallacy

IDEAS ABOUT

MORE LIKE THIS

Our Brains Make Us Way Too Optimistic About Meeting Deadlines

What Is the Planning Fallacy and How To Beat It Down (9 Useful Tips)

Three Simple Rules For Managing Deadlines

It's time to

READ

LIKE

A PRO!

Bite-sized knowledge
to upgrade
your career