- To A Mouse
“But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!” – Robert Burns
Most Burns Night celebrations tonight will be reading out Rabbie’s “Ode to a Haggis”, though I’m obviously partial to his failure embracing poem above (that saying, I do enjoy a good haggis).
Life is what happens to you when you are busy making plans. Plans are great for activities, not outcomes. Plan your meals, but not your weight loss. I’m a big fan of dreams. As long as you embrace their failure with equal vigour to embracing their promise.
Seth Godin captures this dynamic in this post "Desire is full of endless distances”…
- “Just one more level on this game, she says. Once I get to level 68, I’ll be done. Just one more tweak to the car, they beg. Once we bump up the mileage, we’ll be done. Just one more lotion, she asks. Once I put that on, my skin will be perfect and I’ll be done. Of course, the result isn’t the point. The mileage or the ranking or slightly more alabaster or ebony isn’t the point. The point is the longing…The worst thing of all would be if we actually arrived at perfect, because if we did, we would extinguish the very thing that drives us. We want the wanting.”
Individual dreams die every day, but the act of dreaming is eternal.
Leadership and Management / Turning Adversity to Advantage 
It turns outs that Seth himself was similarly inspired by the subject of “best laid plans” this week – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/01/the-best-laid-plans.html .