It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law - Douglas Hofstadter

✍️ Attribution

Coined by Douglas Hofstadter in his 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid.

📒 Meaning

A self-referential observation about the persistent tendency to underestimate how long tasks take. Even after you adjust your estimate knowing the law applies, the adjusted estimate will still be too optimistic — the bias is recursive and inescapable.

Hofstadter’s law - Wikipedia