Category Archives: Planning

Who are you creating today?

Planning, Reflection

Have you ever had the thought that an older person is the offspring of their younger self.   What did that person think 10, 20, 30 or more years ago?  Their thinking or lack of it has led to certain actions or behaviors which have led them to where they are today.  Are they in a good place today?

You are the parent of your future self..

Of course that applies to me and you too –  our past selves are our parents and we are the offspring.  In a sense we are all the children of our past thinking.  I say thinking because what we think leads to how we act.  Our action or lack of action has a major impact on our circumstances.  Small daily actions lead to big changes and results over time.  If you smoke every day then in 5 or 10 years time the effects will be very apparent.  If you eat well and exercise every day then the results will be very clear in time. The question to ponder is who are you creating today?  Who will you be by the end of 2017?  Will you be a better person – healthier and happier?  Will you be a person on the path to wealth or a person of on the path to poverty?  What trajectory are you on today?  We are creating our future selves with our thoughts and our actions today.

So let’s take time out today from the hustle and bustle of daily life to reflect and decide who we want to be by the end of 2017 or by 2020.  We are all busy but we must take the time to reflect – even for 10 minutes.  Decide to create your future self to be the person you want to be.  Take control and create your future self.

PS.  My book ‘Experiments in Personal Change’ might just help you create the future self you want.

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This book is about taking six key personal growth areas and experimenting with them in your life. The experiments are written in such a way as to make them actionable so that you can put them to the test and observe the results yourself. The information contained in the book is designed to be short and easily digestible. If you read this book and take action by trying out the experiments in your own life and reflect on the results, then you will gain knowledge that can change your life for the better.  Please see the link below:

The Planning Fallacy & Your Goals

Goal Achievement, Planning

Understand the Planning Fallacy January is a time for reflection and planning.  It seems that we have a  new sheet, a new year and a blank canvas.  We can in a sense leave the past behind us.  This year will be new and different – definitely much better than last year.  We can have a notion to make this year our best year yet.  That is certainly my own intention as I start on my annual journey and as our planet continues on it’s journey around the sun.  When planning our year ahead however it is important to be aware of a judgement bias called the planning fallacy.

“The 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.”

-Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, 1979

This phenomenon occurs regardless of the individual’s knowledge that past tasks of a similar nature have taken longer to complete than generally planned.  The bias only affects predictions about one’s own tasks; when outside observers predict task completion times, they show a pessimistic bias, overestimating the time needed.

Management books even recognize the highly pervasive effects of time underestimation: the “laws of project management” state, “A carelessly planned project will take three times longer to complete than expected; a carefully planned project will take only twice as long (Pfleeger, 1991, p. 41).

One famous example of the planning fallacy is the construction of the Sydney Opera House, where construction lasted 6 years longer than predicted, at a cost almost $100 million over budget (Hall, 1980).  Another example is the construction of the channel tunnel (Chunnel) to connect London and Paris which was finally completed in May of 1994, even though initial estimates planned on it being completed in June 1993. The cost rose to over 10 million pounds, immensely more than the estimated 4.9 million pounds.

I have come across the Planning Fallacy many times in my own life.  Completing my PhD is an example.  At the start I expected it to take three years, when in fact it took me six years to complete, and was much much harder than I expected.  I even wrote a book about my experiences of doing my PhD to help others following after me.   A study by Buehler, Griffin, and Ross (1994) shows that I am not the only one who gets it wrong when predicting academic completion dates.  In this study, a class of students was asked to estimate the date at which they would finish their thesis. They actually completed their thesis, on average, in 56 days. However, they predicted they would complete their thesis in 34 days. Indeed, even when asked when they might complete their thesis if “everything went as well as it possibly could”, the mean response was still 49 days.

Another example which I have from my own life is buying a new home and moving house. It took me two years longer than I had expected at the outset of the project.  I simply could not predict all the challenges that  would occur ahead of time which slowed me down immensely.  Another example of the planning fallacy comes from Daniel Kahneman’s recent book,

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