We Plan, God Laughs: The Planning Fallacy
The Oasis Reporters
June 9, 2022
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
By Justin Chukwumah
“I’m continually shocked at my wildly inaccurate estimations of how long something takes to do”
–Sarah Koenig, the host, and executive producer of the podcast Serial.
If you can relate to the opening quote, you are not alone. This is actually the planning fallacy at work, and it is a very human phenomenon. A grand example in action is the massive public works program, “Big Dig” in Boston (a highway construction project which was completed nine years later than the planned completion date and ran over the budget by $22 billion). On the other hand, a simple example is the “quick” errand which ends up taking a whole day to complete.
The planning fallacy is the child of two primary mistakes as Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”. The first is a non rational plan which is built on best-case scenarios (no hurricanes or civil unrest will disrupt my progress and I won’t get any last-minute requests or illnesses that disrupt activities).
The second is a failure to consider the lessons learnt from similar cases (yes, the last five tasks took me three weeks — I can get it done in one week this time around). In short, the “God will not let it happen” and “Inshallah, everything will work out well” mindset.
Roger Buehler, a social psychologist further explained the planning fallacy in a 1994 paper, that it is quite fascinating that we can hold two seemingly contradictory perspectives; even though we know our previous estimations are largely optimistic, we believe our present predictions are very optimistic.
Well, history repeats itself, we know the past and we are still doomed to repeat its mistakes. George Orwell clearly outlined this feeling as “doublethink” in the classic novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four as:
“To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic”
This is also the most important thing I have learnt from Project Management training (I’m a project manager by the way); our proclivity to underestimate the time required to complete a project.
We make this same mistake over and over because it is much easier to imagine success than failure. We only have the picture of “What does success look like” (in management consultant speak), whereas there are so many ways for our plans to go bananas.
We always ask, when can we close this out? When can this task be completed? I am yearning for someone to ask, “what can go wrong?”.
Even though this is almost never asked, something almost always goes wrong. A little blocker here and there, assumptions that turned out to be wrong, and having more dependencies than anticipated.
We are so hopeful when it comes to setting timelines and for some mysterious reason, the responsible parties almost never push back on “hopeful” timelines, either because we want to create a false sense of efficiency as the guy who can complete tasks in record time, avoid being seen as lazy and full of excuses, or all impressions.
On the other hand, when timelines are quite “optimistic” we falsely think we have all the time in the world and there’s no way the world can come to an end in the allotted period. So, we delay or de-prioritise either to provide additional time to have the light bulb moment, exhibit our bad habit of procrastination, quench more pressing fires or simply to say “d@#n the odds! (Air punch)”.
Procrastination, underestimation and deadlines coming together?
This is just like moving the hands of the doomsday clock forward. If you’re reading this, you are most likely a knowledge worker (I explained this in my previous piece), and you might regularly eat this combo for breakfast. The modern workplace is a fire fighter’s heaven where we all eat, live, and breathe in the urgent-important quadrant of the priority matrix, quenching fire after fire.
Do not get me wrong, I am not trying to make the case for non-accountability or the elimination of executive parlance, I am simply trying to make the case for wearing the hat of the devil’s advocate and asking the questions which could lead to fewer heartbreaks. Simply put, having more pre mortems and fewer postmortems.
What is my advice? Always make room for errors, as the party making requests and the party carrying out the request. The avoidance of this requires more collaborative decision-making & planning, and by this, I am not referring to the “collaboration” corporate jargon which is usually empty and backed by nothing.
You might ask, “Is this good for anyone?”. The simple answer is yes!
An acceptance of this reality and escaping all the traps of planning, estimation and execution will lead to fewer all-nighters, less binging on coffee and energy drinks, fewer times with “Do-not-disturb” as our status on Microsoft teams (which is a synonym for “I am about to miss my deadline”).
But then, what do I know? Even as I wrap up this piece, I have an energy drink in front of me and it is already past the submission deadline. Sigh!
This piece was originally published in the Wema Economic Quarterly review, Q3 2021.
Click for access:
WQER-September-2021 (1)
