Why we plan too optimistically – and how we still remain convincing
I did it again.
I underestimated how long it would take.
Not because I was unprepared. Not because I didn’t know the effort involved. But because my brain can think through the individual steps of a task in seconds – and simply forgets that executing is a different dimension of time than imagining.
I plan while I optimize. I optimize while I plan. And somewhere between the perfect schedule in my head and the reality of my calendar lies a gap into which my deadlines regularly fall.
If this sounds familiar: welcome to the club of optimistic brains. It’s bigger than you think.
Why your brain is structurally too optimistic
The neuroscientist Tali Sharot has taken what I have just described to the neurological level. She calls it the optimism bias – the deeply rooted tendency of our brain to overestimate future positive events and underestimate negative ones. This bias is not a weakness, not a thinking error that can be eliminated with a little discipline. It is neurally built in. Most people exhibit it – regardless of culture, age or education.
The psychologist Daniel Kahneman has specified this effect in a specific context and coined the term planning fallacy the systematic tendency to underestimate the time and effort required for one’s own tasks – even if one knows from experience that similar tasks have always taken longer. The paradox is that people can simultaneously know that they have regularly planned too optimistically in the past – and still plan too optimistically again next time.
Why? Because the brain primarily looks to the future when planning, not the past. It constructs a best-case scenario, calm and focused, without disturbances, without the distractions, interruptions and unexpected obstacles that then actually arise. Cognitive psychologist Roger Buehler has shown in his studies that the optimism bias in scheduling almost disappears when people are explicitly and actively asked to link their past experiences with their current planning. The problem is not a lack of knowledge – it is a lack of recall.
As a solopreneur, you know this pattern. You know that the launch takes longer. You know that the offer needs three loops instead of one. You know that. And you still plan as if everything is different this time.
The optimist who dies at Christmas
Now it’s getting uncomfortable.
Admiral James Stockdale spent seven and a half years as an American prisoner of war in North Vietnam – torture, solitary confinement, no certainty of his release. When author Jim Collins asked him years later which of his fellow prisoners had not survived the camp, Stockdale replied without hesitation: “The optimists.”
The optimists were the ones who said: “We’ll be home for Christmas.” And when Christmas came and went, they said, “At Easter.” And then Thanksgiving. And then Christmas again. And at some point, between one broken hope and the next, they died – of a broken heart.
Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and survivor of several concentration camps, described the same phenomenon. The mortality rate in the camp rose measurably in the week between Christmas and New Year 1944 – because so many prisoners had believed they would be liberated by then.
That is not the argument against optimism. It is the argument against naïve optimism – against confusing hope with prediction, goal with timetable.
Stockdale himself survived because he was able to do both at the same time: accept the brutal facts of his situation without glossing over them – and at the same time retain the unshakeable conviction that he would survive in the end. Jim Collins later called this principle the Stockdale Paradox: Keep the faith that you will win in the end. And at the same time confront yourself with the hardest facts of your current reality.
It sounds less dramatic for a solopreneur, but it’s the same structure: Believe that your offer works – and at the same time take a sober look at why the last launch didn’t go as planned.
Pessimism is not the answer
The obvious, but wrong conclusion would be: then be more realistic. Be more pessimistic. Assume the worst.
Psychology research has played this out. Depressive realism – the hypothesis that depressed people make more accurate judgments than non-depressed people – is a seductively elegant concept, but scientifically fragile. Recent replication studies have found no consistent evidence for it. What we can say with certainty, however, is that Depressed people are not more realistic – they have a different bias. Their pessimism is effective even when it is not appropriate.
There is a more nuanced variant, defensive pessimism, described by psychologist Julie Norem. Defensive pessimists deliberately set low expectations, think through possible failures – and use the resulting tension as motivation. They perform just as well as strategic optimists. However, this only works if you leave them alone. Encouraging defensive pessimists and interrupting their typical negative preparation worsens their performance. The strategy is real – but it is tied to a certain personality type and is fragile.
Over decades of research, psychologist Gabriele Oettingen has worked out what really works robustly. Her approach is called Mental Contrasting – or in the practical version: WOOP (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan). The core is simple and at the same time counterintuitive: positive thinking alone sabotages goal achievement because it puts the brain in a state that feels as if the goal has already been achieved. Energy and motivation drop. What works, on the other hand: Having the desired outcome clearly in mind – and then explicitly imagining the obstacles that stand in the way. This combination activates action where pure wishful thinking paralyzes it.
Oettingen’s research is well documented. However, it has a tacit premise that hardly anyone says: mental contrasting only works if you are able to think clearly.
The real problem: what happens when the pressure becomes too great
This is the gap in previous research.
Stockdale describes what to do. Oettingen describes how to prepare. But neither of them answers the crucial question: what do you do when your body is already in panic mode?
When you are sitting in the pitch and realize that you are losing control. When the investor asks a question that catches you off guard. When the conversation turns sour, the voice becomes flatter, the flow of thought breaks off.
What happens next is biology: the brain releases stress hormones that specifically downregulate the areas of the frontal cortex that are responsible for logical, analytical thinking. The body switches to survival mode – flight or fight. This state can last up to 15 minutes if it is not actively interrupted. During this time, no real mental contrasting is possible. No Stockdale paradox. No freedom of choice.
That is not weakness. It is evolution.
The question is: how do you regain access to your thinking before the 15 minutes are up?
The answer comes from an unexpected direction: drama
Actors have solved this problem professionally – long before there was neuroscience to explain it.
Stella Adler and Michael Chekhov have independently developed techniques that use the same basic principle: Emotion and the ability to act can be accessed via the body. Not through thoughts. Through movement. Through anchored physical gestures that reliably trigger a certain inner state – even if the actor is in the 20th take, exhausted or the director is breathing down their neck.
I developed this principle further, initially for my own work, then in coaching – and from this I developed the Emotional Backbone, which I now use in my work as a speaker coach.
The emotional backbone: a movement anchor for strategic realism
The basic idea is not complicated. But it is consistently physical – which sets it apart from most self-regulation tools.
An emotional spine is a movement anchor: a specific physical gesture, initially large and then reduced to a minimum, which is linked to a certain inner state during repeated training. Not with a feeling of well-being. But with access to freedom of choice and logical thinking – even under extreme stress.
The mechanism uses exactly what happens under stress: The autonomic nervous system prioritizes musculature. A targeted movement impulse directly addresses this system – and can thus shorten or even prevent the logical reduction in performance that the stressful state triggers.
What distinguishes the Emotional Spine from a simple breathing exercise: It is not reactive. It is practiced in advance, for a specific situation or role. A presentation, a difficult negotiation, a pitch. The formulation follows a principle from acting practice – an “around-to” formulation that combines action and intention: I do X to ensure Y. Not a wishful formulation. Not an affirmation. An action with a justification.
The result is not emotion at the touch of a button. It is thinking at the touch of a button.
And that is precisely the prerequisite for everything else: for Stockdale’s brutal honesty, for Oettingen’s mental contrasting, for the conscious change between optimism and strategic realism, which I believe is possible – but can be trained, not taken for granted.
What this means for you
Back to the beginning: I underestimated the task again.
I will probably do that again. The optimism bias can’t be switched off. And I’m not sure I’d want to either – it’s the same mechanism that makes me start things that I should probably sensibly stop doing.
But I can train how I deal with the moment when reality catches up with the plan. Whether I then switch to panic mode and react – or whether I retain access to my thinking and make a decision.
That is the real difference between an optimistic brain that harms itself and an optimistic brain that works.
And now the question I have for you:
In which situation are you losing access to your thinking – and what are you doing instead?
Key Takeaways
- The optimism bias leads us to overestimate future positive events and underestimate negative ones.
- The planning fallacy describes the tendency to underestimate the time required for tasks, even if we know from experience that this is often not the case.
- Instead of being naively optimistic, we should apply the Stockdale paradox: Accept reality and keep faith in success.
- The Emotional Spine is a movement anchor that helps to maintain access to logical thinking, even under stress.
- It is important to develop strategies to manage the influence of optimism bias and to act rationally.
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
