A closer look
Planning fallacy is a phenomenon in which predictions about how much time will be needed to complete a future task display an optimism bias and underestimate the time needed, which is why your weekend DIY project is currently entering its third grueling month. Proposed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, this cognitive glitch proves that human beings are fundamentally incapable of visualizing worst-case scenarios when setting personal deadlines, completely ignoring their own historical track record of massive delays. You confidently schedule back-to-back meetings and assume you can finish a major report in two hours, completely failing to account for technical issues, bathroom breaks, or the inevitability of staring blankly at a wall. We navigate our entire professional and personal lives in a state of delusional optimism, perpetually surprised when things take exactly as long as they actually take in objective reality
