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productivity
You assume your current project will finish on time.
A 1994 study of students found they completed senior thesis projects 20 days later than their own most realistic estimates.
This is the planning fallacy. We naturally focus on our ideal path to completion while ignoring the inevitable obstacles that occur in real time. We essentially plan for a version of the future that does not exist.
You are inherently optimistic about your own capacity for speed.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Buehler, Griffin, and Ross, 1994
- What the check found
- The 1994 Buehler, Griffin, and Ross study is a foundational paper on the planning fallacy; the claim accurately reflects the study's findings, though the specific '20 days' figure is a slight rounding of the statistical result.
- Confidence
- Contested
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.