Implementation intentions correct the planning fallacy

A to-do says what. An implementation intention says when, where and how. “Write the proposal” is a task. “I write the proposal tomorrow at nine, at the kitchen table, before I open my mail” is an implementation intention. Gollwitzer named them in 1999, and the difference turns out to matter more than it looks. Koole and van ’t Spijker found that people who wrote their plans this way completed more of them and were interrupted less often. They also help with the planning fallacy: our habit of estimating how long something takes by imagining it going well. No traffic, no interruptions, no discovering halfway through that the file is somewhere else. Specifying the circumstances forces the obstacles into view before you commit to a time. It costs about ten extra words per task. That is a cheap correction for a bias that has been wrecking estimates for as long as anyone has been making them. Related Before you start (a task, a work session, a project…), set a time budget Spend a little…