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The Golden Rule of Being a Contractor
The fallacy that makes us bad at time estimates and how to fix it
There is one thing that all contractors (especially new ones) are very bad at. It’s one of the most challenging things to do properly, and the error is committed by both individuals and monolithic institutions — always and probably forever. Contractors are notorious for underestimating the amount of time it takes to complete a project.
I’ve been contracting for over seven years, and I — to this day — still make this mistake. It wasn’t until a few years ago, when I read a book that explains this false-estimation tendency in scientific terms, that I understood the phenomenon known as the “planning fallacy.” Here, we’ll look at how contractors can use it to their advantage to get paid more fairly, increase their income, and start providing better estimates based on the information at hand.
The inevitable problem: imperfect estimates
Unless you are some divine contracting guru, chances are you’ve been late on a project, and more than once. Late projects, especially in the professional world, are one of the biggest reasons business relationships go sour. Often, it’s not because of the client’s distaste for the late work (if you’re doing a fixed-price contract), but that…
