Why everything takes longer than you think it will ... and what to do about it.

Midday often heralds a sense of discomfort in my working day … it's around about then that I’m forced to concede that the three or two – or on a bad day – one thing I’d planned to complete before lunch will stay on my next action list a little (or even a lot) longer.

Depending on the specifics of what remains to be done, I might feel mildly irritated, somewhat grumpy or downright gloomy. Why the @#$% does EVERYTHING seem to take longer than I think it will?? And on those rare occasions when I get through a task faster than I anticipated, the realisation that I’m ahead of schedule is accompanied by something akin to jubilation.

My sense of delight at the prospect of having some discretionary time in my day suggests that at least part of my brain knows from experience that stuff hardly ever goes quite according to plan. Meanwhile, another part of my brain clearly expects my schedule to stay on track … otherwise I wouldn’t feel so miffed when it doesn’t. And, like anyone else in possession of a human brain, I’m not always good at slowing down my thinking in order to:

a. Work out which part of these two contradictory beliefs are closer to objective reality and  

b. The costs of continuing to act on expectation, rather than on experience.

This consistent failure to consider previous performance when one predicts future performance is a classic case of the wishful thinking that underpins one of our most well-documented cognitive biases: the planning fallacy.

Why everything takes longer than you think it will ...

So why do our our internal predictions consistently fail to match the external reality?

Firstly, because when we estimate how long something’s going to take (or how much of other limited resources, such as money and energy, it will consume), our conclusion is based on a rough guesstimate of the costs of that particular task or project. Let’s take nipping into the supermarket to purchase four items … your brain will do a super-speedy calculation based on the assumption, that, on a typical visit:

• You won’t bump into an old friend who’s keen to find out all about your new job/girlfriend/car.
• You won’t choose the queue in which a price check is required on an obscure item being purchased by the person in front of you.
• You won’t feel compelled to assist someone with a screaming child unload their trolley.
• You won’t be seduced by the specials on dips and spend ten minutes choosing between chipotle hummus and beetroot and walnut.
• You won’t remember five other items that you remember you also need and have to double-back to get them.

Yet in reality, on any given visit to the supermarket, something comparable to one of these events is more likely to happen than not … which means that your speedy calculation omitting all of them is WRONG.

Not surprisingly, the more variables involved in completing the task or project, the more likely it is that an unexpected event will derail your plans. Which is why it’s so rare to hear of building projects coming in on time and on budget, or a new product hitting the market early. With the addition of each step or player in the process, the probability of an atypical event occurring is compounded.

Our tendency to confuse how long we want something to take with how long it will actually take is another factor underpinning the planning fallacy. I might aspire to take about 20 minutes to clear my inbox in the morning. It actually takes at least three times that. Which doesn’t stop me from thinking 'I should be through my emails in about 20 minutes, I reckon' at about 9am … Every. Single. Day. One would think that after several thousand days of something taking an hour, one would update one’s expectations. But no. My failure to update my estimation based on experiences sees me succumb to the planning fallacy yet again. And again. And again. 

While the planning fallacy is prevalent in both professional and personal contexts, it’s very easy to misdiagnose … if there is a genuine belief that a task or project will consume fewer resources than a careful assessment would likely reveal, the planning fallacy is at play. However, don’t go blaming the planning fallacy when an individual or group intentionally underestimates the resources required in order to gain agreement to proceed with the task or project. If you provide a budget to your boss that you know is likely to blow out, that’s not the planning fallacy … that’s strategic omission (no judgement here).

… why it matters …

It can be easy to think ‘You know what? Everything always takes longer than you think it will. That’s just life. It’s not a big deal.’ And in some respects this is true - single incidents of things taking longer than you think they will are often no big deal. But when many things take longer repeatedly … you have a problem. Not just in terms of time, but probably also in terms of money (you grab take-away on the way home because you didn’t have time to get to the supermarket), relationships (you have to cancel lunch with a friend because you haven’t finished that spreadsheet), wellbeing (you feel in an almost permanent state of stress and/or overwhelm) and attention (you have a constant list of things you haven’t done yet scrolling through your mind).

… and what to do about it.

If you typically submit proposals or papers early, spend less time in the shopping centre than you think you will or get your tax returns in well before the due date … congratulate yourself for being in a very small minority and stop reading now. For everyone else, here are some specific actions you can take to mitigate the impact of the planning fallacy on your performance, effectiveness and wellbeing.

1. Take the Outside View

The fact that Daniel Kahnemann titled an entire chapter of Thinking Fast and Slow ‘The Outside View’ says a lot about how important this technique is in mitigating the planning fallacy. To understand why we need to consciously take the outside view, we need to first understand our default thinking mode: the inside view.

This is the perspective we have on any situation in which we find ourselves. It doesn't matter whether I’m planning a business merger or a birthday party; the inside view is likely to have a similar impact. My estimate of how long each component of the project will take is probably overly optimistic. I can't foresee the specific hurdles that lie in wait, (contracts are held up at the lawyers, I forget to buy candles for the cake) so I fail to take the possibility of any hurdles into account.

If I do pause to consider my previous experience, or (less likely) to gather data based on a sample size of more than 1, my brain will tend to hone in on the differences, rather than the similarities, in other comparable situations. As a result, I'll reassure myself that 'this time it will be different' (i.e. less costly in terms of time, money, energy etc). So: ‘this time the Boards are more cooperative/someone else is bringing the birthday cake/no one will propose a change of plans at the last minute …’.

And the outside view? That’s the far more rational perspective we have about other people’s situations. Instead of seeing the differences between this specific merger or birthday party and those that have gone before, we see common patterns in many mergers and party preparations. We note the probability of different outcomes, or different timeframes. We estimate costs more accurately.

So one trick for overcoming the planning fallacy is: don’t save the outside view for others; use it on your own situation. Here’s how:

1.   Think about what honest advice you’d give someone else who in your situation. What time/financial/energy/other costs would you predict their task or project would consume?

2.   Collect as much data as you can about costs and outcomes of situations such as yours. For bigger tasks or projects, this may be publicly available.

2. Use Pre-hindsight

Pre-hindsight is a nifty technique that helps you:

1.   anticipate the specific events that might derail your plans

2.   plan to mitigate the impact of these events

3.   reduce the costs of a task or project.

I used it very successfully to improve our household’s morning routine, which for several years led to me feeling I’d completed a Tough Mudder before I’d left the house. No matter how early I awoke, my kids and I would get to the school gates just as the bell had rung, dishevelled, stressed, and, in my case, hoarse.

Applying pre-hindsight it was clear that ‘lost’ shoes, knotty hair and lengthy farewells to the cat were some of the frequent derailers. Installing an evening routine of getting uniforms ready, enforcing more regular hair-brushing and starting cat cuddles earlier meant that the actual costs of getting out of the house were reduced. Identifying that unforeseen events (a bad night’s sleep, spilt Weetbix, an AWOL cat) can derail even the best-planned morning led to getting the kids out of bed 15 minutes earlier than in the past.

In summary, to stop everything taking longer than you think it will:

1.   Acknowledge the costs of the planning fallacy to your productivity, mental/emotional state, relationships, professional effectiveness and anything else.

2.   Take the outside view of the situations that have significant costs. What are you neglecting to calculate in your estimation of how much time/energy/money/anything else each task or project will consume?

3.   Develop systems and habits that prevent of the occurrence of any of the foreseeable de-railers. 

If you'd like to identify specific actions you can take in your daily life to safeguard against the planning fallacy, join members.thinkbetterdobetter.com and download this article as a comprehensive worksheet.