You Suck at Predicting (And So Does Everyone Else)
For much of my adult life, I believed I knew myself. I think most people do. We assume we know how we’ll feel or act in a given situation. But that assumption often goes unchallenged. It wasn’t until I started deliberately paying attention to my internal world that I began to realize how often my self-predictions were off—and how misleading my inner dialogue actually was.
Psychologists call this affective forecasting: our tendency to mis-predict how future events will make us feel, and for how long. Even when we’re consistently wrong, we rarely revise our expectations. Despite clear patterns, we continue trusting our emotional predictions like they’re facts. This isn't a character flaw, it's a universal human feature.
This disconnect—between how often we’re wrong and how rarely we adjust—is what fascinates me. If I’m wrong nine times out of ten about how something will feel, wouldn’t it make sense to approach my next prediction with a bit more skepticism?
One area where this shows up clearly is in social situations. I’m an introvert. That doesn’t mean I dislike being around people—it means that socializing requires energy rather than giving it. I love spending time with others, but it’s effortful. I need solitude to recharge. So when I make plans, I’m usually excited—but when it’s time to leave the house, a big part of me resists.
Here’s the irrational part: 95% of the time, I’m genuinely glad I went. But that hasn’t reduced the resistance. If you ran an experiment a hundred times and got a positive outcome 95 times, you’d expect your brain to adjust. Mine doesn’t. I still have to override that same internal protest every single time.
This is part of a broader bias sometimes called the introspection illusion—the belief that we know our own minds better than we actually do. We assume our thoughts are transparent and our motivations are obvious, even though they’re often hidden, habitual, or context-driven. (More on this in upcoming blog posts.)
The human brain is a prediction machine. Every expectation is, at its core, a forecast. So every time we’re disappointed—or pleasantly surprised—that’s evidence that the prediction didn’t hold.
The point isn’t to eliminate expectations, that wouldn't be realistic. It’s to become a better observer of them. When we treat our misjudgments as data points instead of personal failings, we open the door to real insight. We shift from assumption to curiosity. From rigidity to experimentation. From illusion to clarity.
What’s one thing you keep expecting to feel a certain way about—even though your actual experience proves otherwise? What would shift if you trusted the evidence of your life more than the voice in your head?