I’m analyzing a recent incident, attempting to understand the underlying psychopathology – or at least the cognitive bias – that led to my current predicament. Last Friday, around 4:45 PM, a senior manager, Brian, approached my desk. The context: end of quarter, everyone stretched thin. He had three "urgent" projects – market segmentation for the new Q3 product launch, competitive analysis for a niche demographic, and a deep dive into our existing customer churn metrics. He framed it as "just needing an extra pair of hands to get us over the line this weekend," with the implicit understanding that refusing would necessitate him "bothering" someone else, probably more senior, for whom these tasks were clearly below their pay grade. My immediate internal computation: declining would result in a micro-expression of disappointment, a momentary lowering of Brian’s estimation of my commitment, perhaps a slight shift in the interpersonal dynamic. The effort required to manage that social discomfort felt, in that instant, more burdensome than the actual labor. This is the illogical part. I said yes. Without hesitation. The projects are not simple; they involve extensive data manipulation, cross-referencing, and synthesizing complex information into executive summaries. Each is easily a full day’s work. So now I’m looking at roughly 30 hours of work between Saturday morning and Sunday night. My wife, Sarah, has already planned a brunch with the Thompsons on Saturday – they just got the new Tesla, and apparently, we need to compare charging station experiences – and Sunday was supposed to be when I finally fixed the sprinkler head that’s been subtly eroding the lawn near the driveway. These are not optional engagements in our suburban social economy. The mental calculation now shifts: how to compress 30 hours of analytical work into the interstitial spaces between performative leisure and household maintenance, all while maintaining the veneer of enthusiastic productivity for Brian on Monday morning. The phenomenon I’m trying to diagnose is this disproportionate avoidance of minor interpersonal friction. It's a predictive failure, a miscalculation of future discomfort versus present awkwardness. The temporary relief of saying "yes" to Brian’s request was immediate, palpable. The looming dread of the weekend’s impossible workload is a delayed consequence, one that I *knew* was coming but still chose. It feels less like a choice and more like an automated response, a subroutine designed to prevent even the slightest ripple in the perceived social fabric. I’m not sure what the evolutionary advantage is to optimizing for such negligible short-term social ease over significant long-term personal burden. It’s like a neurological glitch, a systemic error in risk assessment. And now I’m here, at 2 AM, looking at these spreadsheets, wondering if the Thompsons will even notice if I’m just… slightly… off.