Wednesday, Sep. 12, 2018

Benjamin Franklin gets credit for the quote “If you fail to plan, then you’re planning to fail.” 

Cute word play but it’s really a dumb statement if you think about it because who “plans to fail”?

It’s entirely more accurate to say “If you fail to plan, then your lack of planning may complicate your life a little more than if you had allocated some time to plan out what you were gonna do beforehand.”

This, however, is not very quotable. 

So instead we say “you’re planning to fail.”  I’m not sure why anyone would specifically plan to fail but I AM sure that said failure is probably not the direct result of not planning. 

“Bad” planning, maybe. 

Like if you make a plan to ride out a hurricane, for example, then you are definitely “planning to fail.” But this terrible plan is not a “failure to plan.” It’s just a questionable plan. 

Today I’m planning on moving a web site from one server to another. A solid plan considering the current server where the web site resides is older than dirt. 

This plan could go south on me if I don’t execute it properly so this is a case where I’m NOT failing to plan but I STILL have the potential to fail. I probably won’t because I’m good at my job but there you go. 

My hope is that any and all plans YOU make today and in the future work out swimmingly. But if you “fail to plan” just don’t “plan to fail”. Because that’s just dumb. Lol. 

Have a great day, Benjamin Franklin!

✌️