On leaving the plan behind

Every project I have ever finished looks nothing like the thing I set out to make. For a long time I read that as a failure of planning. Lately I have come round to reading it as the point.

The plan is a hypothesis

A plan is not a contract with the future. It is a guess, written down, so that you can tell later whether you were right. The value is not in the guess being correct — it is in having something specific enough to be wrong about.

The map is not the territory, but you still need a map to notice you have gone somewhere unexpected.

What actually changes

Three things, usually, and always in the same order:

1. Scope. You discover the thing you thought was one job is four.
2. Sequence. The order you imagined turns out to depend on something you had not thought about.
3. Purpose. Somewhere along the way the reason you started stops being the reason you continue.

The third is the one worth paying attention to. Scope and sequence are logistics. Purpose drifting means you have learned something.

Holding it loosely

None of this is an argument against planning. It is an argument for treating the plan as disposable — cheap to write, cheap to throw away, and worth revisiting far more often than feels comfortable.

Write it down. Then be willing to be wrong about it in public.