This got me thinking about making complicated plans in life. When you have fifteen steps laid out to get what you want, it sounds like a PLAN! It sounds like you covered your bases—look at all that detail! In reality a fifteen step plan has fifteen chances to go wrong, fifteen turning points where things can change. Every time you add a step the probability of your plan going awry increases. If you try to get 15 friends to the same brunch, some will be late and some won’t show up at all. Obviously complex plans can be necessary in life, but where they’re not, I’d like to avoid them.
I’m reminded of Eisenhower’s quote “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” You can’t convince a million men to row across the channel by just saying “we’re going to kill Hitler.” You have to provide them with a string of proposals that are not likely to succeed by themselves, like jumping out of airplanes, sending thousands of bombers to Germany, splitting the atom in a bomb, in order for the mountainous proposition of invading Germany to end the war seem not just possible but probable.
This got me thinking about making complicated plans in life. When you have fifteen steps laid out to get what you want, it sounds like a PLAN! It sounds like you covered your bases—look at all that detail! In reality a fifteen step plan has fifteen chances to go wrong, fifteen turning points where things can change. Every time you add a step the probability of your plan going awry increases. If you try to get 15 friends to the same brunch, some will be late and some won’t show up at all. Obviously complex plans can be necessary in life, but where they’re not, I’d like to avoid them.
I’m reminded of Eisenhower’s quote “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” You can’t convince a million men to row across the channel by just saying “we’re going to kill Hitler.” You have to provide them with a string of proposals that are not likely to succeed by themselves, like jumping out of airplanes, sending thousands of bombers to Germany, splitting the atom in a bomb, in order for the mountainous proposition of invading Germany to end the war seem not just possible but probable.