Make a new plan

Plans don't always work out. It's been said that no plan survives first contact with the enemy – or, in the words of Mike Tyson, getting punched in the mouth. Sometimes your plan is too optimistic or misses some important details that become apparent later on. Sometimes early failures make it clear the rest of the plan isn't going to work. Sometimes it only takes a little bit of time to realise that, actually, your plan was just a bad plan.

There's nothing wrong with that, no shame in cutting your losses and saying, well, this plan is no good. In fact, stubbornly sticking to a plan that doesn't work is far worse than jumping ship. You make a plan for a reason, and if those reasons are no longer relevant, or your assumptions about how to achieve them were wrong, then continuing to follow that plan is just pushing on nothing.

However, having no plan is also a mistake. Sometimes the temptation when things go wrong is to just say "ah, what the hell" and give up on plans entirely. But without a plan you're left just doing things and hoping they work, purposeless actions with no intention behind them. Having no plan might be better than having a bad plan, but not much better. You made a plan for a reason, and that same reason necessitates a new plan.

So the two steps work together: ditch the old plan, make a new plan. Maintaining this rhythm seems crucial to me; it's the two-stroke engine of robust planning. A misfire in either half of the cycle and you get stuck, either with a bad plan or no plan at all.