We've developed a message for this and it's called reference task forecasting and Robert Carroll could easily have done a reference task forecast if he had thought about it and so can all of us, you know, when we do things, if he had done a real reference task forecast, which would have been asked authors

who have already finished their books, not planning to do it, but that's the key point,

this is not planning.

It's already been done, so it's empirical, It's on the ground. You can't discuss the numbers. It actually took this long. He would simply add up those numbers and divide by the number of authors he'd asked and he would have a realistic anchor. This would be the right anchor. This would be the

base rate for writing a book. He got it completely wrong by getting the base rate for writing

journalistic articles.

And this is the thing you can't compare activities that are that different,

but it happens all the time,

and we even do it subconsciously without even making it explicit.

I'm Sreni Rao and this is the unmistakable creative

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Bent, welcome to the unmistakable creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Yeah, you have a new book out called how big things get done,

which is all about making huge mega projects happen,

which I absolutely loved.

But before we get into all of that,

I want you to start by asking you,

what did your parents do for work

...