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planning fallacy
You are biologically wired to miss your own deadlines.
People consistently underestimate how long a project will take, even when they have failed to finish on time before.
Researchers found that students predicted they would finish assignments earlier than they actually did because they focused on an ideal scenario. They ignore past data regarding their own pace, preferring to view the current project as an exception. This optimism is a permanent feature of your forward-looking perspective.
You act as if the past holds no lessons for your future.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Buehler, Griffin, and Ross (1994)
- What the check found
- The claim accurately describes the planning fallacy, a well-established cognitive bias for which the cited paper provides essential empirical data, even if it did not originate the theory.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.