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Planning fallacy
Why do our projects fail? Well let us be brutally honest, we are bad planners. From the Millennium dome to leaving your revision to the last minute, we are terrible judges of how to plan. In most cases this can have dire consequences.
The Planning fallacy is a term coined by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Teverksy (really good authors btw) which is a principle referring to us underestimating the time it takes to complete our own projects due to our biases.
But why do we tend to fall prey to this phenomenon of planning fallacy?
1. Overconfidence. We tend to overestimate our abilities beyond what is objectively reasonable. This is evident in many students who believe that they will be able to leave revision to the last week or even the day of the exam. In reality our brain cannot possibly comprehend huge amount of information within such short time, which is obvious to an outside observer.
2. Another reason is the coordination problem, which occurs where team work is required. When working with others we need extra time, which we usually don’t take into account when planning.
3. Finally Procrastination: Unfortunately most of us are very familiar with this. Lack of impulse control and the failure to control oneself. You can read more about this in one of my earlier articles.
Ok so now you are aware of the some of the main pitfalls to avoid, this should hopefully allow you to plan better moving forward. See below for a quick summary of things you should be doing to prepare for any project/examination you may have.
What is your plan?
The following is a useful checklist for a project/exam plan. Essentially this list simply tries to ensure that there is sufficient information in the plan that it can be used to carry out the project.
• Are all known major tasks included?
• Is there enough detail?
• Are the tasks in the correct chronological sequence?
• Have you thought about how one task can affect with another?
• Is the plan easy to understand?
• Is it flexible and easy to adapt? This is important, as there will almost inevitably be changes that you will not forsee.
• Are the duration estimates feasible/realistic?
• Are the high priority tasks clearly identified (Known as critical path in engineering but beyond the scope of this article)?
• Have you thought about how your resources are available throughout the project time? (e.g. your school teacher is not available during the Easter holidays before the exam?)
• Can the plan be used to track progress?
• Most importantly have others seen it and commented/agreed? (Ideally show your plan to a U-cademy consultant for review)
As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome on the topic.
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