I’m not 100% sure I understand the self-defeating prophecy point, but there have been a few studies that argue that your planned completion time actually affects reality like you say.
Some psychologists also make a distinction between “time spent working on task” (which people seem to be good at sorta knowing) and “time when people are actually finished with a task” (which they often get wrong because they forget about unknown unknowns).
I agree that counteracting poor planning also requires you to look at ways you failed:
The techniques I cover, Murphyjitsu, RCF, and Back-planning all tackle slightly different things. Murphyjitsu helps you identify potential failure modes so you can patch them. RCF helps you rescale estimates, but can also identify past choke points. Back-planning, I will admit, is mainly for estimates.
Hey jollybard,
I’m not 100% sure I understand the self-defeating prophecy point, but there have been a few studies that argue that your planned completion time actually affects reality like you say.
Some psychologists also make a distinction between “time spent working on task” (which people seem to be good at sorta knowing) and “time when people are actually finished with a task” (which they often get wrong because they forget about unknown unknowns).
I agree that counteracting poor planning also requires you to look at ways you failed:
The techniques I cover, Murphyjitsu, RCF, and Back-planning all tackle slightly different things. Murphyjitsu helps you identify potential failure modes so you can patch them. RCF helps you rescale estimates, but can also identify past choke points. Back-planning, I will admit, is mainly for estimates.