EKAITZ SAIES

Why the PADDLE GAMES doesn’t have an elaborate and polished masterplan?

To stay lean, agile, open to serendipity, and to avoid falling for the Planning Fallacy.

Too often, ambitious projects become bogged down by overcomplicated masterplans that assume a predictable future. But reality doesn’t work that way. Instead of relying on rigid, long-term projections, we approach the PADDLE GAMES with flexibility, adaptability, and real-world feedback — allowing it to evolve naturally and thrive in uncertain conditions.

This approach is rooted in research from behavioural economics, risk management, and adaptive strategy.

Have you ever started a project thinking it would take a few weeks, only to find yourself still working on it months later? Or budgeted for something only to realise the final cost far exceeded your expectations? If so, you’ve fallen victim to the planning fallacy — a cognitive bias first introduced by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in 1979.

At its core, the planning fallacy describes our tendency to underestimate the time, cost, and risks of future tasks while overestimating their benefits. Even when we have past experience suggesting otherwise, we still fall into the trap of optimism bias—believing that this time will be different.

For example, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman recounts how he and his colleagues were once writing a textbook. When asked to estimate how long it would take, they optimistically predicted two years. When they later reflected on similar projects, they realised those often took seven to ten years—yet they still assumed their case was special. The book ended up taking eight years to complete.

While Kahneman and Tversky focus on cognitive biases, Nassim Taleb takes a more radical stance in The Black Swan and Antifragile. He argues that the planning fallacy is not just about human error—it’s a systemic problem caused by our failure to account for fat-tailed risks.

Most people assume the future will unfold in a predictable, linear way. But in reality, life is filled with Black Swan events—rare, high-impact occurrences that shatter our assumptions.

For example, major projects like infrastructure developments, the Olympic Games, and military interventions almost always run over budget and over schedule. The Sydney Opera House, for instance, was estimated to cost $7 million and take four years. It ended up costing $102 million and took 14 years to complete.

In Adapt: Why Success Always Starts with Failure, Tim Harford offers another perspective on why rigid planning fails. He argues that the world is too complex for top-down, master plans to succeed. Instead, progress comes through trial and error, experimentation, and adaptation—a process much closer to how evolution works.

Harford suggests that rather than trying to predict everything upfront, we should:

• Experiment in small steps – Instead of committing to a big, untested plan, test different approaches on a small scale first.
• Expect failure and learn from it – Every plan will face setbacks. Success comes from adjusting based on feedback, not sticking to a rigid blueprint.
• Decentralise decision-making – Large-scale planning often fails because it assumes too much control. Instead, allow individuals and teams to make localised adjustments based on their own circumstances.

The planning fallacy affects everything from personal projects to billion-pound government programmes. Whether you’re launching a business, writing a book, or organising a major sporting event like the PADDLE GAMES we held in Palma, recognising this bias can save you time, money, and frustration.

As Harford argues, success isn’t about perfect planning — it’s about adapting fast.

Stay lean, stay agile, experiment constantly, and embrace uncertainty.