Something to listen toWorkload & wellbeing
Why Do We Put Things Off Until the Very Last Minute?
A podcast conversation about cutting things close, and the planning mistake behind it
Why it’s worth your time
The psychologist Angela Duckworth admits on this No Stupid Questions episode that she's often the last one into yoga, and the conversation that follows explains workday lateness better than a list of productivity tips might. She and Stephen Dubner separate plain prioritizing from procrastination and from the planning fallacy, the habit of forecasting a best-case version of how long things take. The fixes they settle on are small enough to try on tomorrow's calendar.
How to stop underestimating how long things take
- Listen to the first half.
A listener's question about last-minute arrivals takes up the first part; the second segment, on what names say about people, is lighter and optional. Listen for Duckworth's mental movie and the two fixes she offers near the end of the first half.
- Check your estimate against last time.
Before your next task with a deadline, write down how long you think it will take. Then write down how long the last similar task took, and plan around the second number.
Good moments for this: before you estimate a deadlineafter a week of running latewhen a task keeps slipping
Keep going with Truest
Small actions add up. Truest helps you find the next thing worth doing, make the space to do it, and keep a record of your progress. It’s a private place to work on your career, and it’s yours, not your employer’s.
- It actually happensWe’ll put it on your calendar and remind you before it starts.
- Part of the check-inThe end-of-day text asks for two scores and a line; this fits in it.
- It’s yours to keepEach thing you do is saved to your private record, there when your next review or job search comes around.
Anything else we can help you with this week?
Making it work for you
Every workplace is different. Here’s what to think about before you start, and what might get in the way.
Things to think about
Dubner suggests some last-minute arrivals are people putting a low-priority task last, the way a news story puts its least important details at the end. If arriving just in time costs nothing, it may be a fine choice.
What might make this harder
Duckworth and Dubner mostly talk about forecasting, and say less about avoidance. If dread is the cause, a better estimate may not help; making the first step tiny, or naming what you're dreading, tends to do more.
Questions people ask
What is No Stupid Questions episode 78 about?
Angela Duckworth and Stephen Dubner take a listener's question about why people show up at the last minute, and talk through prioritizing, procrastination and the planning fallacy. A second segment asks whether your name says anything about you.
What is the planning fallacy?
The tendency to underestimate how long, how hard or how complicated a task will be, a term from Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. In the episode, Dubner raises optimism as a cause, and Duckworth points to research tying the planning fallacy to picturing a best-case version of events.
How do I stop underestimating how long tasks take?
Duckworth suggests looking at how long the same kind of task takes other people, and remembering how your past estimates for similar work turned out. Planning with those numbers tends to beat planning with a hopeful guess.
What it says, and how it holds up
There's a kind of lateness that has nothing to do with not caring: the extra three emails before a meeting, the quick task that turns out not to be quick. Dubner reads out a tip from the psychologist Ellen Hendriksen to beware of one more thing, and Duckworth owns up to it at once. A forecast that only imagines the smooth version of the day will tend to come up short. That's the planning fallacy, and Duckworth's picture of it is a mental movie of the best case, playing while ninety-nine other movies were possible.
The episode is a conversation, not a lecture, and its evidence varies in weight. The planning fallacy has decades of research behind it; a reader's tally of late classmates in Pune, which suggests people who live close by run later, is a charming small sample that Dubner shares as one reader's email. Duckworth's practical advice sits between the two: plan from evidence instead of hope, and be intentional about which things deserve your early arrival.
Sometimes the lateness isn't a forecasting problem at all. If your calendar is booked back to back by other people, no estimate will create the five minutes between meetings; shorter default meeting lengths, set in your calendar's settings, tend to help more than willpower.
You might like
More in Workload & wellbeing
See allRead this alongside your role page
Tell Truest what you’re dealing with
We read every one, and we write guides for the things that come up most. Leave your email if you’d like to hear when we do.
Picked by Truest and described in our own words. The original belongs to its creator. Last updated October 9, 2026. We sell a career membership; where that’s relevant above, we say so.