This is a great point. I've slowly started to believe in the planning fallacy [1] and that humans just aren't that good at estimating the time that it takes to do a given task.
The freakonomics podcast had a good episode on the topic this year [2]. There's an amusing quote by Daniel Kahneman in the episode that brings me some comfort:
"If you realistically present to people what can be achieved in solving a problem, they will find that completely uninteresting. You can’t get anywhere without some degree of over-promising."
The freakonomics podcast had a good episode on the topic this year [2]. There's an amusing quote by Daniel Kahneman in the episode that brings me some comfort: "If you realistically present to people what can be achieved in solving a problem, they will find that completely uninteresting. You can’t get anywhere without some degree of over-promising."
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_fallacy
[2]: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/project-management-rebroadca...