Plans

Early today I went to my local library. I had to drop off a book (I had finished reading it, and it was due back tomorrow), and I decided to use this as an opportunity to check out another book which I had looked up a few days prior ("Brave New World", Aldous Huxley). However, I hit a small but significant snag whilst at the library: I couldn't remember the book I was interested in! Couldn't remember the name, couldn't remember the author. The only reason I can put it down here now is because I looked it up in my browser history. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

I was annoyed with myself at the library. I had made a simple plan, to check out a particular book which was in, and then I botched the plan by forgetting what I was there for. I find myself thinking back to the words of Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, 'A plan never survives first contact with the enemy.' I can appreciate that better now. You go through the trouble of formulating a plan, plotting out everything, and then someone somewhere does something stupid, and the plan becomes at least partially worthless. So then what? You can scrap the plan entirely, and come up with a new one (inadvisable, depending on how much time is left). Try to salvage as much of the plan as possible, and rework the parts that no longer apply. Unless, of course, you successfully set up a Xanatos Gambit, and this failure was simply part of the plan.

A less militaristic quote that still certainly applies comes from Robert Burns, 'The best laid plans of mice and men often go wrong.' You make a plan, it doesn't work, you move on. So it goes. I would like to close with a question put forward by Eddie Izzard, regarding Mr. Burns' quote. Which mice plans in particular was he talking about?