Barking Up The Wrong Tree October 2nd, 2023 ---------------------------------------------------------------
Before we commence with the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my new book become a bestseller! To check it out, click [here](. --------------------------------------------------------------- This Is The Best Way To Get Big Projects Done: 5 Secrets From Research ([Click here]( to read on the blog) Many consider the Sydney Opera House and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao to be the greatest architectural masterpieces of the past century. But how the two got constructed are very, very different stories... The Guggenheim Bilbao came in on time and under budget. It turned Frank Gehry into one of the most esteemed living architects. Meanwhile, constructing the Sydney Opera House was a comedy of errors. It was scheduled to take five years to build. It took fourteen. It went 1400 percent over budget. And it ended architect Jørn Utzonâs career. Murphy had a law and it was specifically about this sort of scenario. Sure, some big projects go like Bilbao did. The Hoover Dam arrived under budget and two years ahead of schedule. Apple started on the iPod in January of 2001 and it was in customer's hands that November. But projects like those are rare. Exceedingly rare. How rare? Thank you for asking. Bent Flyvbjerg assembled a database of 16,000 projects from over 20 fields in 136 countries. He found that â91.5 percent of projects go over budget, over schedule, or both. And 99.5 percent of projects go over budget, over schedule, under benefits, or some combination of these.â Thatâs right: one in two-hundred projects arrive on time, on budget and do what they said theyâd do. Okay, I know what some people are thinking: âEric, I am not hosting the Olympics or building a tunnel to Nebraska; Iâm just renovating my kitchen and trying to get this IT project finished for work.â But Flyvbjerg says it doesnât matter -- the same principles apply. Renovating your kitchen? All you wanted was a small transfusion of happiness and somehow your home became an archaeological dig attached to a money furnace. Managing a project at the office? What seemed like a straight shot becomes an odyssey rivaling Homer's, only with more paperwork and less seductive sirens. Youâre left overwhelmed and mumbling WhydidIdothistome. But it doesnât have to be that way. Weâre going to find out how to make projects work. The book weâll be looking at this week is â[How Big Things Get Done: The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between]( Okay, letâs get to it... Ask âWhy?â Sounds simple but itâs vital. You need a clear sense of why youâre doing this, what you want out of it, and what that entails. And then you need to stick to it. Flyvbjerg says, âDeveloping a clear, informed understanding of what the goal is and whyâand never losing sight of it from beginning to endâis the foundation of a successful project.â Take some time and actually think about why you're doing this to yourself. Otherwise, the project is going to morph. And grow. And keep growing. What began as a "small backyard redesign" becomes an urge to replicate the Versailles gardens, complete with mazes and ornate fountains. And, hey, why not throw in a swan pond? You need limits. You need clear goals. You need a guiding North Star. And you need to know âWhy?â Robert Caro is the worldâs premiere biographer. Before he starts on a project he forces himself to summarize the book in just a few paragraphs. And this process is tortuous. âWhat is this book about?,â he asks himself. âWhat is its point?â He goes through endless iterations. But once heâs done, he prints that page out and pins it to the wall over his desk where it is always staring at him. Heâs always looking up to make sure what he is doing is aligned with that brief summary, that heâs not getting out into the weeds. And thatâs how he writes groundbreaking bestsellers like â[The Power Broker]( Think about âWhy?â Analyze the project as if you were a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, trying to crack the Enigma machine. Create your North Star. Okay, now you know âWhy?â Feeling good? Well, thatâs bad... Beware Optimism Bias We are a way-too-optimistic species. Studies show the majority of drivers think theyâre above average. (Iâm bad at math but Iâm not that bad at math.) Most smokers inexplicably believe they are less likely to get cancer than other smokers. Naïve optimism. It's the reason we tell ourselves that our New Year's resolution to hit the gym every day will definitely stick this time or that our addiction to 90âs boy bands is just a harmless quirk and not a cry for help. Youâre on your couch, a pint of ice cream deep, binge-watching home makeover shows, thinking, âI could do that!â The next thing you know, youâre surrounded by paint swatches, and there's a crater in your wall where a light switch once was. Researchers have yet to prove the âBut-It-Looked-Cool-On-Pinterest!â principle or itâs corollary, the "It's-Only-Going-to-Take-Me-a-Day" fallacy but I believe in them both. Classical decision theory says we weigh all the options and then choose the best one. And thatâs wrong. Work by [Gary Klein]( has shown we donât do that at all. Instead, the vast majority of the time we take the first idea that occurs to us, ask ourselves if it might work and if the answer is yes, we go with it. But when it comes to big, time-consuming, expensive projects, using the best-case scenario as an estimate is a criminally bad idea. Decades ago, work by Nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky established âthe planning fallacy.â We consistently underestimate how long things will take. It was more cleverly expressed by physicist Douglas Hofstadter. He created Hofstadterâs Law: âIt always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadterâs Law.â When people tell me to âgo with my gutâ, I remind them that my gut once told me to eat an entire pizza by myself. We need hard-nosed analysis not âinstinctâ when it comes to planning big projects. The shiny optimistic glow of âTHIS time itâll be different!â will leave you penniless and insane. Flyvbjerg says, âUnchecked, optimism leads to unrealistic forecasts, poorly defined goals, better options ignored, problems not spotted and dealt with, and no contingencies to counteract the inevitable surprises.â So do your homework. Donât assume you know all there is to know. Donât jump in with your first idea. Ask questions and consider possibilities. Otherwise, one moment you're starting a âquickâ project, and the next, seasons have changed, presidents have come and gone, and somewhere, a glacier has melted. But how do we truly counter optimism bias? Being a pessimist means we probably wonât even get started. What to do? Take The Outside View Now, you might be thinking, "But Eric, this project is different. It's special." Ah, young padawan, that's where you're wrong. Thatâs what the experts call âuniqueness bias.â We avoid uniqueness bias by taking âthe outside view.â Looking at things like a dispassionate third party might see it. Your project is almost certainly not special. Unless youâre building a personal fusion reactor, people have done something like this before, and you can learn from them. We talk about âcost or time overrunsâ but those are inappropriate terms. The problem wasnât really an underestimation, it was using an âanchorâ for your estimates that was wrong or too optimistic. The most proven system for budgeting and scheduling is called âreference class forecasting.â Looking at very similar projects and using the average of their budgets and timelines as a starting point. Doing a kitchen renovation? Find 5 or more people who have done similar renovations and ask what their final cost and timeline was. Then average them. Thatâs a great starting point. âOh, but random stuff comes up and you canât account for that.â Wrong. If you ask people what their final numbers were, not the initial ones, that accounts for all those unknown unknowns. You donât need to know what the unknowns are, because the final numbers include everyone elseâs previous unknowns. This is how you break free from the samsara cycle of DIY despair. Alright, you did proper forecasting. Ready to go? Well, donât... Think Slow, Act Fast A âbias toward actionâ is common. And often recommended. And itâs a terrible, terrible idea. Many people feel planning is wasted effort. They wanna get moving. But thatâs not really a bias toward action; itâs a bias against thinking. See, a bias toward action, while sounding like the battle cry of superheroes, is less âCaptain America saving the worldâ and more âWile E. Coyote with a new, doomed-to-fail Acme product.â Sure, it can be fine for quick, easily reversible situations -- but big projects arenât like that. Most projects donât âgo wrongâ; they start wrong. Yes, I know, you'd rather be binge-watching the latest series about vampires who solve crimes, but you need to slow things down and plan. Planning is working. Progress in planning is progress on the project. And, most importantly itâs the cheapest and safest form of progress. Itâs the equivalent of looking both ways before crossing a street, so you don't get smacked by the bus named âReality Check.â Amazon has a great process. Jeff Bezos realized that after any project launched there was always a press release summarizing it along with an FAQ, all written in easy-to-understand language. So he made it company policy to write the press release and FAQ before starting the project. If it didnât make sense or if people had big issues, better to know that now and revise it. But a plan on its own isnât enough. A key part of planning is testing. Trying out the fundamentals in a simulation to see if they work. To address errors before they get expensive. Testing is the difference between a plan and a reliable plan. Before Pixar starts a movie, they do a 12-page story document that is endlessly revised. Once thatâs ready, it goes to script. Time to start production? Nope. They do rough storyboards for the entire film. About 2700 of them. They have staff record voices and add simple sound effects. This takes a while but itâs a whole lot cheaper than actually making the film. Then they can actually watch a (rough) version of the entire movie. And then that gets revised â about eight times. Sound like a lot of planning? Sure. But this is why most movies are terrible yet Pixarâs are pretty consistently great. Theyâre âcheating.â They already perfected the film before a single frame was animated. And then they improved it, tested it, and improved it again. They stacked the deck. A âbias toward actionâ might get you going but I sure donât wanna watch the resulting movie. Plan. Test. Iterate. Prevail. Finally, itâs time to get started. But who is actually going to build this thing? And how? For Big Projects, Please Hire An Expert Every Olympics Games since 1960 has gone over budget. Summer, Winter, all of them. The average cost overrun is 157%. Why? Because itâs âeternal beginner syndrome.â There is no central authority that plans every Olympic Games. Each time itâs a new city with a new team, reinventing the wheel. They have no experience. So hire an expert. Someone with deep domain experience and a proven track record. Watching three YouTube tutorials does not make you a professional plumber. I get the allure of cutting corners. We're all out here, pinching pennies, hoping our retirement isnât gonna be a cardboard box under an overpass. But sometimes you need to rain down the cash for someone who knows the difference between a Phillips and a flathead. Similarly, if you want a project to go as smoothly as possible, for godâs sake donât try anything new. Donât be first. Take the words âcustomâ and âbespokeâ out of your vocabulary, drive them to a remote location in the desert and detonate them. Do you want a doctor âgiving something new a shotâ during your quadruple bypass? Then donât do it with your roof or the new IT project at work. Use proven technology, proven materials, and proven methods. Your future, less-frustrated self will thank you. Alright, time to sum it all up â and learn the common, overlooked error that spells disaster⦠Sum Up This is the best way to get big projects done:
- Ask âWhy?â: Unless youâre vying for the title of "World's Most Unnecessarily Stressed-Out Human" spend the time to think about why youâre doing this, what it needs to accomplish and flesh that out to give you a âNorth Star.â
- Beware Optimism Bias: Remember Hofstadterâs Law: âIt always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadterâs Law.â Donât be naïve. Do your homework and donât rush in unless you want to be the underappreciated straight man in the comedy routine of life.
- Take The Outside View: Your project is not unique. Find similar projects to benchmark against so your budget and timeline are realistic. If youâd donât, your plan will not work. (It will, however, give you hysterical stories for dinner parties and ample reasons to drink wine on a Tuesday.)
- Think Slow, Act Fast: Extensively plan. Then test. Then iterate. Do this and it will be one of the few times you donât feel like the universe is pointing at you and laughing.
- Hire An Expert: If Dante had written a tenth circle of hell, it would probably have looked a lot like me trying to install solar panels. Get a professional. And donât have them do anything custom or clever. Do what you know will work.
Early in the process there may be some delays. This is common. Since itâs early, youâll have time to catch up⦠right? Wrong. Flyvbjergâs data says this is one of the most pervasive and deadly myths out there. Those "innocent" early delays are not cuddly baby problems. They're demon seeds that'll grow into full-fledged apocalyptic hell-beasts that will make you wish you were back in kindergarten eating glue. Flyvbjerg says, âEarly delays cause chain reactions throughout the delivery process. The later a delay comes, the less remaining work there is and the less the risk and impact of a chain reaction.â Projects that fail tend to drag on. Projects that succeed zip along and finish. Beware early delays because more time remaining means more time for the unexpected to occur and for things to go wrong. Improve the plan and address issues as quickly as possible before they spin out of control. Big projects are like life's hazing rituals. But completing a big project is the adult version of getting a gold star sticker in school. Itâs exhilarating. Youâre like, âLook at me, I did the thing and didn't cry in public more than twice!â So follow the steps above and accomplish big things the right way. Afterward you can sing âWe Are The Championsâ and let out one of those satisfied groans you only make after eating a particularly good taco. ***If you are one of those lovely people who bought "Plays Well With Others" please leave a review on Amazon [here](. Thanks!*** Email Extras Findings from around the internet... + Want to know if eating like people in the longest-lived regions will increase your longevity? Click [here](. + Want to know if suppressing negative thoughts can help your mental health? Click [here](. + Want to know how to reduce relationship anxiety? Click [here](. + Miss my prior post? Here you go: [This Is How To Survive Disaster: 6 Secrets From Research](. + Want to know how to help your kids be smarter and happier? Click [here](. + You read to the end of the email. No, this doesn't count as a "big project" but I'd still like to thank you for reading. Alrighty -- it's Crackerjack time: we discuss a lot of science here but how realistic is the science in movies and TV? Specifically, chemistry. If you've ever wondered how realistic shows like "Breaking Bad" are, I've got you covered. Chemist Kate Biberdorf breaks it all down in a fun video. To check it out, click [here](.
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