HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
—Terry Pratchett, HogfatherHuman behavior revolves around denial of the obvious. Any approach to getting work done, any technique of project management, surrenders value in direct proportion to how much it concedes to denial. The ultimate denial—in my culture, American business management—is the denial of death. I propose a theory of doing stuff founded on confronting our limits, in particular cognitive biases, denial, and innumeracy, in order to work together with realistic optimism.