Hofstadter’s Law

Hofstadter's Law is “It always takes longer than you expect, even when you account for Hofstadter’s Law.”

It's one of my favourites I share time and time again. We are bad at estimating. We don't allow for the unexpected. We don't know the unknown unknowns. We are overly optimistic. We suffer from recency bias. Generally, we struggle with big, complex things.

From Douglas Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979)

In the law's recursion, it's a little like this guidance from Clean Code:

“The first rule of functions is that they should be small. The second rule of functions is that they should be smaller than that.”—Clean Code

Or omit unnecessary words from Steve Krug