This week's book: "The Wisdom of the Bullfrog" by Admiral William H. McRaven.
"Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Some mornings in the bond pit at the Chicago Board of Trade, I'd know by ten o'clock that I was off my game.
It's a hard thing to describe if you've never done it. You're not thinking clearly, you're a half-step behind the market, and every trade feels like you're reaching for something that's already moved. My gut would tell me the same thing every time: shut it down, go home, come back tomorrow with a fresh perspective.
I almost always ignored it.
Instead, I'd go grab some lunch, talk with a few of the guys, read the paper, watch the news, anything that would reset my attitude. Then I'd walk back onto the floor and step into the pit, and hope a few good trades would erase a bad morning.
There was no strategy. Just hope.
And I can tell you this: my “hope strategy” lost a lot more often than it won.
Chapter nine of this week's book is titled Hope Is Not a Strategy, and McRaven's point is simple. Any effort worth doing needs three things working together:
A vision that defines what you're going to do.
A strategy that explains how you’re going to do it.
A plan that spells out who's responsible and the details of how it actually gets done.
Miss any one of the three and you're not executing, you're wishing.
Looking back, the thing that gets me isn't that I had a bad morning. Everybody has bad mornings. It's that I had no vision for what I was trying to accomplish that afternoon, no strategy for how I would turn it around, and no plan beyond eating a sandwich and changing my attitude.
As human beings we need hope. It inspires us, encourages us, empowers us, it keeps us going. But you can’t just hope your way through life. Pair it with a clear strategy, a solid plan, and hard work, and you can accomplish nearly anything.
One thing to try today
Pick one thing in your life you're currently hoping will work out. Write down three lines: what you actually want to accomplish, how you plan to get there, and what the specific next step is and who's doing it. If you can't fill in all three, congratulations, you've found the problem!
Where in your life are you running on hope instead of a plan? Hit reply, I read every one.
I'll go first: for a long time, it was my career itself. I hoped the right thing would come along. It never did until I sat down and got specific about what I actually wanted.
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Talk tomorrow,
Mike
Practical wisdom for the life you're building