Expectations

One of my favorite books is Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

I love the tension between our dreams for the future and the realities we face today. That said, I sometimes get myself in trouble with my expectations.

While I can be fairly flexible, I often expect things to go a certain way. And sometimes, things do not work out as planned. It can take some time for our emotions to adjust to unexpected events.

Here are a few examples.

When two friends set up a time to meet each other, and one doesn’t show up, the other one may not want to adjust to the unexpected reality of sitting alone.

Sometimes, I’m on my way out the door with just enough time to make it to a class before it begins. At that specific moment, my daughter suddenly needs to be changed, and there’s no reasonable way for me to avoid being late.

Or, I expect a certain amount of work to be completed by our software teams before the end of a sprint when the build system breaks down, and no code can be merged or tested.

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable”.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

The reality of being human is that planning only gets us so far.

The quicker we can change our expectations when confronted with the unexpected, the more effective we can be.