This was originally published on my political blog at https://politicalmusingsofkayleen.blogspot.com/2020/12/change-including-changing-with-times.html.
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One of the sites I follow is Aeon, which typically has some interesting articles / thinking / stimulus to thinking in their weekly newsletter service.
One of the recent articles was "How to let go of a lifelong dream", with the additional sub-heading comment "Adaptability is as much of a virtue as grit. Overcome any feelings of loss or failure by pivoting toward a new passion".
The article is based at the personal, and I thoroughly recommend it. Years ago I heard a manager talking to juniors in the company about goal setting, and saying that it was important to be determined and never waver from your goal - making him and his blind stereotypical bulldog addiction to a single, fixed course a fool of the first degree.
One of my strengths is being able to change plans in response to changes. This first emerged when I was competing in sailing dinghies as a kid, where I would plan a broad strategy - say, go up the left side of windward beat to take advantage of more wind there, but suppose an unexpected wind shift came that meant the right side was now advantaged, I would assess whether the losses involved in switching sides of the beat would be worth the gain when we got there and possibly throw the original plan out altogether.
I've also had to do this in engineering - for instance, back in the days when I was supervising construction (decades ago, now), we might find a patch of soft ground and have to adapt the design on the spot.
This is one of the many reasons I consider people who think everything can be planned and the plan relied upon in engineering are getting dangerously close to incompetent - they're certainly lacking in real life experience, and possibly suffering from the previously mentioned problem of "blind stereotypical bulldog addiction to a single, fixed course".
In my role as a technical specialist, I could be working on half a dozen projects at any one time - always in a minor but significant role: I don't direct the project, and thus am subject to the vagaries of what happens. I am also subject to unexpected - and thus unplanned - calls from people who have suddenly realised they need my unplanned for help, and give me a call out of the blue. This sort of thing makes even trying to complete my timesheet a day early ludicrous - as is the case for many of my colleagues. But we still have the addicts to planning.
Being prepared and willing to adapt "on the run" is not just crucial to the personal, it applies to other areas - my day job, other professions, and especially military planning.
It also applies to economics and politics, which are plagued by zombie ideas - such as the trickle down fallacy (see here, here, and here, for instance) - largely because people are unable to give up their lifelong dream of, for instance, seeing trickle down fantasies somehow come to work.
This is a variation of the old saying that the personal is political. In this instance, the political - and economic - is being poisoned and twisted by personal character flaws.
Don't be rigid in your thinking and planning. If you find that difficult or uncomfortable, then you need to do some work on it - beginning with article mentioned in the second paragraph of this post.
