Research says that one of the most common lies we humans tell ourselves about how long a project will take is not so much an explanation of why I don’t have a kitchen sink as it is an explanation of why I do I’m surprised I haven’t gotten it to work yet.
This discrepancy between intended completion date and actual completion date is so common among humans that it has been studied and given a name: planning error – a bias in our thought processes first identified in 1977 by researchers Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. She explains why people tend to underestimate how much time a task or action will take, saying it’s “partially due to reliance on overly optimistic performance scenarios.”
I didn’t know I was optimistic.
It’s not like I jumped right into this sink project. I had to think about how to do that. We’re not ready to build the kitchen cabinets yet, but going back and forth to the shop to use the sink there began to wear out our door and patience pretty quickly. My idea for a compromise though was to build a workbench style counter that I can fit a sink in and if we have actual cabinets I take the workbench to the shop and put a full slab on it and have a perfect work space.
As a bonus, I can build it for next to nothing, with some ex-floor joists stacked next to the barn, some plywood stocked at the shop, and the screws, tools, and wood finishes I have on hand. I came up with a simple and robust design.
I had the whole process in my head, measuring, drawing plans, gathering materials, cutting, assembling, installing, watching someone else do the plumbing, and then, voila, a usable kitchen sink – just like a real adult – in a week. Ten days at most.
In my defense of not having a sink-workbench combo 10 days into the project, I was unaware of a little obstacle called optimism-bias. Basking in the rosy glow of the very real prospect of a kitchen sink, I couldn’t imagine things going wrong or at least taking longer than I wished. So I didn’t factor unplanned difficulties into my build plan.
Do not judge. Research says it’s human to misjudge these obstacles.
Like the 3-foot snowdrift that covered my woodpile and the sub-zero temperatures that combined meant I had to dig down to the wood, then let a few days of sunshine cast enough ice-melting spells to separate the boards, take to the store and lay them on the ground to thaw. A few days later we spent a few hours pulling nails out of the wood and then another day of drying.
This was followed by a few days of waiting for the temperature to double digits above zero so I could go outside with an electric sander to smooth the boards a bit and sweep and shovel the sawdust because I had properly timed the sawdust production on the walk from the vehicle to the shop. The next day I cut all the wood including the plywood that I reuse for the top.
But the plywood had to be removed heavily armed from where I conveniently placed it on the back of a neat stack of new lumber, and looking closely at the plywood I realized it needed to be washed and sanded, then primed and painted .
This is where I am now – in the midst of this delay – the post-washing, pre-sanding, priming, varnishing and sealing of the plywood top, but also the pre-assembly and finishing of the bench as a whole. Unfortunately, this means the sink that comes closest for connecting the plumbing is the sink cutout template I created and placed on the plywood.
I know the research says I should look at realistic times for each remaining step and allow for some kind of Kentucky windage for the myriad things that could go wrong, but all I can think is, hey, this project will be ready in two days, three tops.
It’s like I’m obsessed with Scarlett O’Hara and all my brain can say is, “Oh, Fiddle-di-dee, I’ll think about problems and delays tomorrow.”
I’ve never thought of myself as a hysterical optimist, but I clearly have an innate talent for it. Logic says I might not have a kitchen sink for a few weeks – maybe three – but at least considering myself an optimist, my mood has lifted. In a few days I’ll be happy to reconsider my timeline. At most three.
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Construction professionals say you can do any job well, quickly or cheaply, pick two. For now I’m nailed cheap, but time will tell how things play out with the other two options at http://www.facebook.com/viewfromthenorth40.
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