Do You Box or Dance?
“Plans are nothing; planning is everything.” ~Dwight D. Eisenhower
We’ve all heard the old adage: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
The problem is, we sometimes get lost in the maze of figuring out the “right” or “best” plan, forgetting there’s no such thing.
A “plan” is merely a bunch of words on paper, inanimate, without life.
Planning, however, is animate, responsive, and interactive—words given life.
Making a plan is only the beginning (and the fun part), like putting on good dance music and tapping your toes. It’s executing the plan—actually dancing—that trips us up, because to do so generally involves other people, people you don’t control, people you must dance with or in front of.
Real life has a way of interrupting the best of plans in all sorts of ways.
But that’s when PLANNING enters the picture.
Planning keeps the long-term vision firmly in place while dealing with short-term inconveniences, the bumps in the road, the unplanned for obstacles.
Responding to the things outside our control as we attempt to implement any plan—the things that disrupt our plan, things that weren’t in our plan, things we never even considered happening to our beautiful plan—that’s like an interactive dance.
Or a boxing match.
Which is where another old adage comes from: “You gotta’ roll with the punches.”
To dance or box: Your choice.
Either way, you can count on tripping up a few times.
Make it part of the plan.
“Everyone has a plan ’till they get punched in the mouth.” ~Mike Tyson