Quote of the Week...from Isaac Asimov

To succeed, planning alone is insufficient.  One must improvise as well.  ---Isaac Asimov.

Somehow I regrettably inadvertently erased this original article, so here's a short summary instead of what I wrote.  Isaac Asimov, who passed away in 1992, wrote a famous science fiction series of novels titled Foundation in which humanity populates millions of worlds in the galaxy thousands of years into the future, under the rule of a centralized empire...which itself is crumbling.  Hari Seldon, a mathematician, has invented the field of psychohistory through which he plans the quick recovery of the empire after its demise...if certain important steps are taken at the right times decades and even hundreds of years down the line.  Its a good plan...initially...but unfortunately the way reality goes, unexpected occurrences happen that disrupt the Seldon Plan and those adhering to it must improvise to the best of their ability.  I'm not sure whether Asimov had this in mind when he made the above quote, but it dovetails well with his series, which I just finished reading again and am now working on his Foundation prequel novels.  The quote has a universal application: while planning in most endeavors is recommended, even essential, there almost inevitably comes the time when something comes up to throw a monkey wrench into everything.   The coach of a sports team can lay out the strategies for a game, the manager of a business can have their schedule and staffing down on paper...and I can have my own personal day set out before me in an organized, structured way.  Yet injuries happen, delivery trucks are delayed, employees call in sick...and all sorts of annoying things happen to me over the course of the day that disrupt my plans.  So it's important to incorporate allowances for some occasional chaos and value its management so that, even if it isn't until the next day or soon thereafter, the original (or slightly modified) plan can continue.  As ol' Forrest Gump once said just after he stepped in a big pile, "stuff" happens....such as my previous accidental erasure of this article...