Dear diary, today I learned that
have a plan but don’t stick to it
Count for the Best, Be Prepared for the Worst
One of my university professors used to say:
“Count for the best, be prepared for the worst.”
It never really struck me back then. It sounded like one of those wise-sounding things teachers say that you nod to, but never really absorb. That changed recently, when two completely unrelated events collided with perfect timing.
Parallel Chaos: Work and Life Sync Up
At work, we had a big project coming up. We wanted to clear the deck: close open PRs, wrap up testing, finish the previous chapter, and switch gears.
Then our cloud provider had other plans.
They had an incident in one of the legacy services we’ve been using. We couldn’t deploy anything. Suddenly, we were frozen. Tasks were blocked. Our perfectly optimized schedule turned into a to-do list of blocked items.
In personal life, just as we were planning outfits for an upcoming wedding and scheduling a catch-up with old friends, my son broke his leg. Hospitals, x-rays, leg plaster instead of the suit.
Suddenly, our neatly arranged calendar didn’t matter anymore.
When the Unexpected Becomes the Teacher
These moments—when the unexpected knocks loudly and simultaneously—have an odd gift wrapped inside them:
- They force you to pause. Not voluntarily, but deeply.
- They reveal assumptions you didn’t realize you were making.
- They teach you how fragile our precious “plans” really are.
For example:
- At work, we learned we had no solid fallback for deployment issues. It made us learn how to escalate issues with the cloud support or it made us think about legacy services we were using.
- At home, I haven’t really known how the hospital procedures work until now.
Not the lessons I wanted. But valuable nonetheless.
It’s also an opportunity for me to practice optimism. It’s really good that the cloud issue happened when we were clearing the deck, not before the big project’s deadline. And it’s amazing that the hospital operates, and we have access to it.
Plans Are Maps, Not Scripts
I still believe in planning. It gives direction and helps align effort. But a plan is more like a map or a compass, not a script to follow line by line.
- It shows you where you’re headed, but it doesn’t dictate every turn.
- It helps maintain focus, but allows for detours, setbacks, and surprises.
The plan is not sacred.
What matters is the ability to respond, to adapt, and to stay calm when things go sideways. Because they will. They always do.
Thanks for reading LED — Lead Engineer’s Diary. If this resonated, share it with someone who’s also figuring it out as they go. Find all posts from the series here.
