Stop lying. Do this instead..

“This won’t take too long.. I’ll be finished this report before you know it.”

Raise your hand if you’ve ever said this before. And now, raise your hand if you’ve ever gone completely over your estimate.

Now, why do you keep making optimistic assumptions when deep down, you know you’ll be wrong?

Because you’re lying. You’re not seeing the situation clearly and you’re making poor assumptions. One of which is that you can control the future. When, the reality is that you can’t.

This forecasting problem thinking shows up in the subtlest of ways. It shows up when you’re estimating the budget of your project. Or it appears when you are trying to decide if your customers will like your product. It even appears when you’re trying to determine what you’ll eat for dinner.

The reality might be that your customers hate the product but you don’t want to accept it. Or it might be that you have no control whether costs will stay low throughout the project. And that’s okay.

You have to accept the harsh truth. Accept it totally and make the necessary changes. Get a new supplier. Talk to customers. Do what the situation requires you to do.

But whatever you do, please, please, please stop lying to yourself. You’re making it 10x harder to go where you want to go.

We don’t want to listen to your lies anymore. We prefer the truth instead.