You sit down to plan your marketing plan for the week. Three Instagram posts, film two Reels, write your newsletter, update your website copy. “Easy,” you think. “I’ll have this done by Wednesday.”
It’s now Friday. You’ve written one Instagram caption (after rewrites), half-filmed one Reel, and your newsletter is still sitting in drafts.
Where did the week go? Welcome to Planning Fallacy, the cognitive bias quietly sabotaging every marketing plan you make.
What is Planning Fallacy?
Planning Fallacy is our tendency to underestimate how long tasks will take, even when experience proves we’re rubbish at estimating.
Psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky identified this bias in 1979, and yet we keep making this mistake even when we’re explicitly reminded of our previous failures.
In a classic study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, students were asked to predict when they’d finish their dissertations. Their average estimate was 34 days. The reality? 55.5 days, over three weeks longer than predicted.
Even when asked for their “worst case scenario” estimate (47.4 days), students still underestimated by an average of seven days.
This isn’t about being unrealistic. Planning fallacy is about how our brains process time and planning.
Why this matters for your marketing
I see this pattern constantly with the coaches, therapists, and creatives I work with:
The Monday Plan:
– Write three social media posts
– Film and edit two Reels
– Send this week’s email
– Reach out to five collaboration prospects
– Update services page
The Friday Reality:
– One post published (eventually)
– Half a Reel filmed but not edited
– Email sent
– Everything else? Next week’s problem
If you’ve ever sat there wondering what happened to all those hours you’d allocated, you’re experiencing Planning Fallacy in action. It makes us chronically underestimate:
– How long content creation takes
– The mental energy required to context-switch
– The inevitable interruptions (client emails, sick children, your brain refusing to cooperate)
– The emotional labour of putting yourself out there
Why we keep falling for it
According to The Decision Lab, several factors make Planning Fallacy particularly stubborn:
1 We Take the “Inside View”
When you think “I’ll write that email newsletter,” your brain pictures the smooth version. Sitting down, words flowing, done in 30 minutes.
It doesn’t account for:
– Staring at a blank screen for 15 minutes
– Rewriting the subject line 4 times
– Getting distracted by a client message
– Second-guessing every word because what if it sounds too salesy?
2 We Ignore Past Evidence
Even though every single week your marketing takes longer than planned, your brain treats this week as different. “This week will be better!”
Research shows we focus on the unique aspects of the current task rather than learning from similar past experiences. Each new week feels like a fresh start, despite mountains of evidence to the contrary.
3 We Underestimate the Invisible Work
“Write Instagram caption” sounds like one task. But it’s actually:
- Decide on topic
- Find or create image
- Write caption
- Check it doesn’t sound weird?
- Edit caption
- Schedule it
- Obsess about whether it’s any good
That’s not a 10-minute task…
And so, we start to see how batching a month’s worth of content, finishing [and sending] that newsletter, and reaching out to those podcasts hosts for collab requests never quite get done.
In addition, marketing has specific features that amplify Planning Fallacy:
- Creative work is unpredictable. Some days words flow. Other days you produce one mediocre sentence after 45 minutes of staring at your screen.
- Marketing requires emotional energy. It’s not just time, it’s the energy to be visible, to put ideas out there, to risk people not engaging.
- There’s always “one more tweak.” When you’re writing about your own business, it’s never quite right. There’s always another edit, another rewrite, another “maybe I should change this entirely.”
- The stakes feel high. This is attracting clients, building your business, putting yourself out there. That pressure makes everything take longer.
How to avoid it: what really works
Planning Fallacy doesn’t just mean your to-do list doesn’t get done. It has real consequences; from losing trust in yourself, to marketing becoming inconsistent and burnout as you try to catch up.
Weirdly, the goal isn’t to become a better estimator or always trust your optimistic brain. The goal is to look at what happened last time, and plan based on that evidence instead.
Look at Your Past Data
What happened last time you tried to batch content? How long did your last email newsletter really take from concept to send? Track your time for two weeks. Not to beat yourself up, but to get real data about where time goes.
Build in Buffer Time (Then Add More)
Think a task will take 30 minutes? Schedule 45. Think you’ll manage three tasks this morning? Plan for two.
Break Tasks Down to the Smallest Steps
Don’t think “create Instagram post.” Plan:
– Choose topic (10 mins)
– Find video/image(s) (15 mins)
– Write caption (20 mins)
– Edit and schedule (15 mins)
When you see all the micro-steps, you realise why a “quick post” can take an hour.
Create Realistic Marketing Plans
Instead of planning what you could do in ideal circumstances, plan for real life. Factor in:
– Client work taking longer than expected
– The energy dip after back-to-back calls
– School holidays, sick days, brain fog days
– The fact that marketing requires creative energy, not just time
In my Strategy Accelerator programme, we completely restructure how people plan their marketing. Instead of five aspirational tasks per week that never get done, we focus on three achievable ones. Suddenly people can consistently hit their targets and sometimes exceed them. Marketing becomes more consistent because the plans are achievable.
Use “Implementation Intentions”
Research on implementation intentions (“if-then” detailed plans for when and how you’ll do things) shows they significantly improve follow-through.
So, instead of “I’ll write my newsletter this week,” think: “On Tuesday at 10am, after my client call, I’ll spend 45 minutes writing my newsletter draft.” Mentally (or literally) time block.
The specificity helps your brain prepare for the task and makes it more likely to happen.
How to use Planning Fallacy in your marketing
Understanding Planning Fallacy doesn’t just help you plan better, it can make your services more attractive, too. Don’t forget, your potential clients are experiencing Planning Fallacy constantly.
The therapy client thinks she’ll “just quickly work through this anxiety” in a few sessions. The coaching client believes he’ll transform his career in a month. The nutrition client is convinced she’ll overhaul her entire relationship with food by the end of the month.
They underestimate:
- How long meaningful change takes
- The emotional work involved in transformation
- The setbacks and non-linear progress that’s normal
- All the invisible micro-shifts that happen before the big breakthrough
This is where you position your service as the shortcut that bridges the gap between their optimistic timeline and reality.
They think: “I’ll figure this out myself and be sorted in a few weeks.”
But you know: Genuine transformation typically takes 3-6 months of consistent, supported work.
Your offer becomes: “Work with me for 12 weeks and we’ll create lasting change together – so you’re not spending months working this out alone.”
This acknowledges the reality of how long change takes and offers your expertise as the thing that makes the journey more efficient and effective.
People work with experts to get results faster than if they were figuring it out alone. Planning Fallacy means your potential clients consistently underestimate how long DIY approaches will take. Your role is to be the guide, the person who’s walked this path with dozens of others, who knows the shortcuts and the pitfalls, who can help them avoid the dead ends you’ve seen people waste months exploring.
When you talk about your services, acknowledge this reality:
“I know you’ve been trying to sort this on your own for a while now. That’s because creating lasting change is complex work. My 12-week programme gives you the support and strategy that compresses what typically takes 6-12 months of solo effort into focused, guided transformation.”
You’re not selling people something they don’t need. You’re offering to save them the months of false starts and frustration they’ll inevitably experience otherwise.
Moving Forward
Planning Fallacy isn’t something you’ll completely overcome. Your brain will always lean towards optimistic estimates, that’s just how we’re wired.
But you can work with this tendency. Plan for messy reality, build in buffer time and track what really happens. Create plans that account for the fact that you’re a human running a business!
Your marketing doesn’t need to be perfect; it needs to be consistent. So, when you’re next tempted to write a list of 13 marketing tasks, try three instead. Small steps, big impact!
Ready to transform your marketing from scattered to strategic?
The Strategy Accelerator helps you create a plan that works with psychology (and real life). Get in touch to find out more.
This is Part 2 of my Bitesize Marketing Psychology series
- Read Part 1 on Why Clients Ghost: Future Lock-In
- Read Part 3 on Why Your Clients Aren’t Just Buying Your Service: Identity Signalling
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