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You have 205 ways to make your goal happen
One of my favourite quotes at the moment is the following, from Claire Cook
“If plan A doesn’t work, the alphabet has 25 more letters — 204 if you’re in Japan.”
I like the simplicity of it.
We have a plan that we want to follow, but sometimes the plan doesn’t work out.
That’s why we have a plan B.
But plan B might not work out either, but that doesn’t stop our goal from being our goal.
In reality there are many more ways we can go about achieving our goals, and we shouldn’t be limited by an initial failure.
It was on the 1,010th attempt when Colonel Sanders sold his chicken recipe, at the age of 62. There are now $25billion worth of sales each year in the KFC chain.
It took Rovio six years, and 51 games failures to come up with the winner that was Angry Birds. They have now had 500 million downloads, more than 266 billion levels played and 400 billion birds shot.
James Dyson, took 15 years, and 5,127 prototypes to reach the successful first version of the Dyson vacuum cleaner. His business now as 12,000 employees around the world, manufacturing not just vacuum cleaners, but hand dryers, cooling fans, washing machines and more.
Try plan A. Try plan B. Try plan C and keep going until you’ve met your goals.
About Rob
Rob was a professional soccer player, and cinema manager, before moving into software development 20+ years ago. He was a founding team member at startup Ormsby Street, is currently a product person at Watchfinder, and speaks and writes on product, teams, productivity and communication.
