UNREALISTIC DEADLINES AND TIME PRESSURES – PLANNING FALLACY AT WORK

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One issue raised by almost every lawyer atleast once (understatement?) in their working life is the issue of unrealistic deadlines and time pressure.

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE COMMIT TO UNREALISTIC DEADLINES?

PLANNING FALLACY…

Planning fallacy is a cognitive bias. What it essentially means is that people tend to underestimate the time it will take them or others to finish a future task. This underestimation happens even when we have evidence from the past which shows that similar tasks generally have taken longer time.

An associate committed to finish a memo, send out an e-mail or research on a query within an hour but ended up taking two-three hours or a partner committed to the client to share the draft of the agreement within 2 days but it ended up taking 3 days. Sounds familiar?

WHAT MAKES US ADHERE TO UNREALISTIC DEADLINES?

We assume that if we or others are not able to meet these set deadlines, it means that we or they are inefficient or cannot manage their time. So we push ourselves or others to work extra hours to meet those deadlines

OR

We know that the timeline is unrealistic but since no one else seems to be struggling or saying no, we cannot possibly be the only one to express that the deadline is unreasonable and push back.

Fear starts to creep in. Fear of being labelled as inefficient, unreliable, not being dedicated enough and the fear of being penalized. The fear that we will left out of important transactions or important tasks. So we stay quiet.

HOW TO AVOID PLANNING FALLACY AND SET MORE REALISTIC DEADLINES?

So what can we do to set more realistic expectations and not fall prey to planning fallacy? Here are a few pointers to keep in mind when setting deadlines.

  • Do not rely only on intuition. Consider how much time previous projects took to complete. If it is a team task, discuss the deadlines with the team members who will be working on the task before making a commitment.
  • Consider all the other commitments and deadlines which you already have for that day and week.
  • Try to imagine how the task will be completed and take into account smaller sub-tasks which will be required to complete the task when deciding timelines especially for big projects. This helps in getting a better clarity how much time each sub-task will take.
  • Consider only the official working hours while setting deadlines. (If you’re rolling your eyes right now, then maybe it’s time to set your working hours and bring them into existence. Respect your time.)
  • Keep a buffer for unexpected emergencies that may not be under your control eg. falling sick, family emergency, an urgent issue to be addressed in another matter, an unexpected court date, regulatory timelines, brain fog, etc.

We may not always be in control of setting the deadlines but we can be conscious and take into account the planning fallacy when we are in control of setting or agreeing to deadlines.

PS: We understand planning fallacy is not the only reason why people set unrealistic deadlines. There are other intentional reasons at play sometimes but we will leave them for another article.

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