What a pickle

Goodness me, what I pickle I get myself into when I try and plan too much! (see previous post if you must)

I should have just read Harrison Owen’s words about over-planning that was sitting right there on my desk-top. It wasn’t written in response to my current flurry of planning, but it might have been! In part:

“I can’t help feeling that you that you may just be working a little too hard. I understand the pressures to describe a program (series of progressive/linked activities). Funders, etc like all that. But two things come to mind, or at least pop out of my experience. 1st No program ever ran the way it was “supposed to”,  albeit a great deal of effort usually goes into trying, and then, after the fact, making it seem like everything “worked according to the plan”. 2nd Detailed Programs tend to take on a life of their own, regardless of what the emergent systems and the environment surrounding them are actually doing. It is called confusing the map with the territory,  and is usually very frustrating and painful.”

Wise words indeed. I’m going to the bar for a drink.