The Focus Bee Show (82) How Leaders Avoid The Planning Fallacy
The planning fallacy – when you underestimate how long an activity or task will take – can be detrimental to both your productivity and your wellbeing. It can cause you to feel stressed as tasks pile up and are behind in your work.
- The number one way to avoid the planning fallacy and that almost all leaders do is to track how long you spend on different tasks. This will help you to gain clarity on how long these tasks actually take and help you to plan more accurately.
- Anticipate both the best and the worse type scenario – allow some room in your schedule if the task takes longer than you hope it will.
- Ask an external person to give you their input on your schedule – this will help you to see if it is realistic or if you have drastically underestimated how long it will take. Talking about it out loud can also be useful.
The planning fallacy only occurs because we are overly optimistic, and we don’t use previous data to help us schedule in a more realistic way. By regularly tracking and reviewing your activities, will make a great impact on your scheduling and planning!
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ABOUT Katie Stoddart:
Katie Stoddart is an award-winning, international, high-performance coach. Katie started her career as a hydrographic engineer working at sea and she now supports founders and executives to thrive in their life & business.
As a keynote speaker, Katie frequently speaks at summits, conferences & podcasts. For her weekly podcast ‘The Focus Bee Show’, Katie interviews thought leaders in peak performance.
Katie works primarily with entrepreneurs & executives through 1-1 coaching & corporate workshops on Focus, Leadership & Performance.
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