The Word Among Us

February 2022 Issue

Silence Is Not Absence

Never Underestimate the Value of Time

By: Fr. Mike Schmitz

Silence Is Not Absence: Never Underestimate the Value of Time by Fr. Mike Schmitz

In 1977, two psychologists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, conducted a study to prove how easy it can be to underestimate how much time it will take to accomplish a task. They called it the “planning fallacy.” In this study, they found that humans have a tendency to disregard historical data when it comes to making predictions. Even though we may have done the same project before and it took us a certain amount of time, we think it will take us less time the next time we do it. In fact, we think it will take us half the time it will actually take.

A few years later, a woman was writing an article about this planning fallacy, and she discovered that she too was guilty of it. She...

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