📚 Source
Who Should Read This
Anyone who:
- Still thinks Gantt charts can predict the future.
- Obsessed with “commitment” dates.
- Confuses plans with reality.
- Stuck doing “agile theater” (standups + Jira, zero transparency).
- Feels guilty that their estimates are always wrong.
- Clinging to the illusion of predictability in complex work.
Influenced Mental Models
Resonating Quotes
Quote
“Those things we call ‘plans’? They’re just guesses with a nice-sounding wrapper around them. Forecasts? Same thing.”
—Kurt Bittner via Escaping the Predictability Trap
Quote
“What is better: driving 100 miles per hour in the wrong direction, or one mile per hour in the right?”
—Kurt Bittner via Escaping the Predictability Trap
Quote
“The notion of a ‘career’ is a story we tell ourselves about how what we are doing now is leading to something better.”
—Kurt Bittner via Escaping the Predictability Trap
Quote
“Adaptability and ability to learn quickly are the keys to success, not steadily marching to the beat of someone else’s drum.”
—Kurt Bittner via Escaping the Predictability Trap
Quote
“Pursuing predictability causes us to lay a veneer of fiction over the real world, making it conform to a plan of what we would like to believe is true rather than what really is.”
—Kurt Bittner via Escaping the Predictability Trap
Quote
“Being forced to produce predictability warps reality and causes people to spend time and energy creating a façade that meets expectations.”
—Kurt Bittner via Escaping the Predictability Trap