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The authors of unrealistic plans are often driven by the desire to get the plan approved – whether by their superiors or by a client – supported by the knowledge that projects are rarely abandoned unfinished merely because of overruns in costs or completion times.

When forecasting the outcomes of risky projects, executives too easily fall victim to the planning fallacy. In its grip, they make decisions based on delusional optimism rather than a rational weighting of gains, losses, and probabilities.

…people often (but not always) take on risky projects because they are overly optimistic about the odds they face.

The sunk-cost fallacy keeps people for too long in poor jobs, unhappy marriages, and unpromising research projects.

Those of us who aren’t self-sacrificing saints will work on a group project only to the extent that we feel our individual efforts will contribute to a meaningful outcome.

In the same category as waterfall is water-scrum-fall. While it is a slight improvement on a fully sequential stage-gate process, it is not agile.

Easily bored people often seek new and different approaches and projects as a way to keep themselves energized and engaged.

Don’t procrastinate on priority projects. Tackle the tough stuff first.

Organizations tend to be outstanding at starting new projects, procedures, activities, and work streams, and terrible at stopping them.

It’s up to you to gather, synthesize, and reflect on feedback to discern what it means for your project/product/creation.