The planning fallacy

The term 'planning fallacy' was coined in 1977 and deals with how most of us are terrible at estimating how long a project will take. We are overly optimistic but terrible at predicting the future. If the project has a budget, we may underestimate that expense too.

The Sydney Opera House was commissioned in 1957 and had an expected completion date of 1963. The budget was 7 million Australian dollars. After the plan had been scaled back, it was completed in 1973 at the cost of $102 million.