The Planning Fallacy

The Goal Achievement Podcast, hosted by Matt East, is all about helping you find clarity, design a plan, and most importantly achieve your goals.

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What is the Planning Fallacy? And why do you need to understand it.

The planning fallacy is a concept that says virtually all tasks take longer than what you expect. Virtually everyone in the world overestimates what they can achieve with their time and is optimistic about what they can achieve during a set time. The planning fallacy was first proposed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979.

Podcast Transcript

Hey guys, what's up? It's Matt! I hope you're all doing really well. On today's episode, we're going to talk through the planning fallacy, and I'm also going to give my top three priorities for Thursday. Let's get right into it.

The big question we all face every morning is this, how can we focus more time on the projects, activities, and relationships that are most important and meaningful to us and less time on the stuff that doesn't matter. So we can actually move closer to our goals and dreams. That is the question. And this podcast is the answer.

My name is Matt and welcome to the goal achievement podcast. I'm so glad you're here now. Let's dig in.

Hey guys, how are you doing? Thanks so much for tuning in. We have a listener question today, which makes me really happy and makes recording the podcast much easier because it's a lot easier to come up with content when you guys send in those questions. So thank you, thank you, thank you!

So the listener question is: "Matt, I just stumbled onto your podcast, and I'm trying to do my top three every day, but I usually only get through one or two priorities, not all three. The tasks end up being more complex than I anticipate. How can I fix this so I can accomplish all three?"

Great, great, great question! What you're dealing with is a phenomenon that psychologists call "the planning fallacy", and essentially what that means is that things in general in life take longer than people expect. It's not just you that struggles with this, virtually everyone in the world overestimates their time. They're optimistic about what they can achieve in a set time.

So knowing that, knowing that this is common and knowing that this is something that we as humans naturally do, we overestimate our ability and we underestimate how long something's gonna take. You can start to slowly adjust. You can start to slowly think through, "Okay. So my gut tells me this is going to take a half an hour. I better block an hour for it, I better think about this task taking longer than I anticipate." That way we can start to slowly adjust and tweak in our head what we think it takes.

This is something that I still, I still have to do. I'm like a super optimist. For example, I think cleaning the kitchen will take me like a minute and a half, and obviously it takes 10 or 20 minutes. So I'm way off on that! I think I can do something five times faster than I can. So if I'm working on something technical, like some automation on my email list or my website or anything, you know, where I'm dealing with technology, I have found, I often have to block four or five times longer than I expect. So if something's a technical task that I'm working on and you know, my gut instinct is it's going to take a half an hour, it's probably going to take two hours or three hours.

So, I've learned that stuff just takes longer. It takes way longer than I anticipate. So that's my suggestion is to be aware of this, be aware that things take longer. Once you are aware of that you're able to either change your top three to recognize, Hey I'm probably not going to be able to get to all three of these, these are pretty ambitious priorities, and you can make that tweak. Or if it's just simply you're overestimating the time you can start to figure out how much time you actually have and make sure that your priorities align much more with the timeframe that you actually have to execute that task.

So that is a great, great question. And the thing, the big takeaway is don't get freaked out. Don't get overly frustrated. Everyone deals with this! Virtually everyone I've ever coached has dealt with this. So I understand it's something that literally pops up with virtually every single one of my clients. We always talk through this at some point. People that sign up for coaching are out to kick butt. They're ambitious! Nobody hires a coach to not get stuff done. You don't hire a productivity coach so you can function at a low level. People that hire me are trying to execute at their highest level possible. So people are very ambitious with their top three, and a lot of times we have to have the conversation about "The Planning Fallacy" to get those expectations back in line so they aren't getting discouraged every day with not completing their top three.

So that's it, the planning fallacy in a nutshell. So be aware of it and make the proper adjustments, start to tweak, start to recognize. Like I said, if it's a technical task I'm working on it often is four or five times longer than I anticipate. So I have to think through that. And if it's something simple, you know, stuff generally takes me about twice as long as I anticipate they will.

So that's it for that question! Let me give you my top three today. So this morning it's a weird day. Most of you know, I live in Indianapolis, which is in central Indiana, in the Midwest of the United States and our weather this time of year can kind of be anything. It can be like cold, cold, we have gotten snow this time of year. Or it can be pretty nice. Usually it's, you know, somewhere in between, but a friend of mine, a really good friend of mine, he was keeping an eye on the calendar and he and I have been playing some golf this summer and this year. He's like, "Man, the weather looks really good on Thursday morning. We should try to get out." So we're going to go play some golf this morning before my client calls this afternoon. So I'm excited about that.

So my priority is: play golf, just relax, have fun, and enjoy the experience. Just be present and enjoy being outside. Enjoy the unbelievable weather. It's super warm weather for Indianapolis this time of year today, and just enjoy it, embrace it! It's beautiful outside! Most of the leaves are kind of done changing, but it's just a really beautiful time of year here. So just embrace it. Enjoy the moment. Enjoy the time with my friend and just be all in. I'm trying to put my phone down during that time so I can just be present with my buddy and with the experience.

My next priority is: I had a new client come in last night and I want to make sure I message them, so they're not without a message between now and when I get back from golf. I don't want to leave them hanging. So I need to make sure to send them a message and welcome them aboard as a client.

My third priority is: record this podcast and that's it. I guess my fourth is I have client calls after golf. I need to be on my game for that, but that'll happen. So that's it guys. Yeah, planning fallacy stuff takes longer than you think. Read about it. Google "planning fallacy," it'll come right up. It's an amazing thing. So once you know about it, it can be like a superpower if you know about it, because you can start to adjust and make the proper tweaks and, and that's it. All right, guys, make it a great day. Let me know if you need anything.

Bye bye!