So it’s February. And probably rather too late to be thinking about resolutions for the ‘New Year’… but then again, ‘better late than never’; ‘it’s never too late to make a change to your life’ and ‘while there’s life, there’s hope’ so I’m going to write about resolutions made in February anyway. And besides, if you only ever wait until January 1st to resolve to make changes to your life, that’s LOTS of days per year where you’re deciding to *not* change!
But I digress. I want to write about the quote: “Failing to plan means you’re planning to fail.” Supposedly Benjamin Franklin said that, one of America’s Founding Fathers and probably all-around wise guy. I’d heard it before, and always thought it was pretty cool. I liked the way the second half of the saying reverses the first half, and it still made sense.
But at the end of last year, when I failed so abysmally at both my Goodreads challenge and my reading through the Bible in a year, I started to look at the saying more closely.
I get the first half. That’s pretty simple. The fact that you fail to plan. As in: you forget to plan; you’re too lazy; you’re too busy maybe; or you don’t feel it’s worth while.
I get all that. And, truth be told, I’m in that boat myself quite a bit. I tell myself that ‘it’s because I’m too busy’ and ‘I’ll get to it later’ and ‘that’s okay, I can wing it – I’m good enough to do that.’
But in re-reading Franklin’s quote, it’s the second half which convicts me. I really had to stop and ponder that half, and realise that, for these two challenges at least, that was me last year.
You see, if I chose to ‘not plan’ HOW to meet my goals, I was actually CHOOSING to fail in my attempt towards that goal.
Mind equals blown!
If you know anything about me, you know that I love completing challenges. I hate to fail!
So when the saying states outright that my actions, in not planning, have meant I have actually chosen to fail; that I have intentionally failed, and that whenever I do this (don’t plan) then I am deciding that at a foreseeable time in the future, I will fail a challenge that I have set for myself? That makes me stop, sit up, and pay attention.
Because to me, that’s a ridiculous waste of time! Why even set myself a challenge, if I’m deliberately going to undermine my own efforts? That’s just dumb!
I need to plan my work, if I’m going to be successful.
So that’s one of my two resolutions this year. The other is still a bit too intimate, a bit too precious, for me to share. But this one? The fact I’m determined to do more planning this year? That I want to share with you all today, dear reader. And why? So you can hold me accountable, of course!
How about you, dear reader? Do you have any resolutions for the future?
And have a great week!
– KRidwyn