A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.

Amid a multitude of projects, no plan is devised.

It usually takes more than three weeks to prepare a good impromptu speech.

There is a tendency to overestimate the impact of phenomena in the short run and overestimate in the long run.

The Futurist [in 1997] did a study of the predictions made within its covers over the past 30 years and found that the best futurists in the country had an accuracy rate of just 68%--they scored 23 hits, and 11 misses. In 1984 The Economist asked corporate heads, finance ministers, and London garbage collectors to predict economic prospects for the next 10 years; in 1994 the garbage men proved just as prescient as the CEOs, and both did better than the finance experts.

You must never mistake a clear view for a short distance.

The Montana State Department of Fish and Wildlife is advising hikers, hunters, fishermen, rescue dog handlers, and golfers to take extra precautions and be on the alert for bears while in the Gallatin, Helena, and Lewis and Clark National Forests. They advise people to wear noise-producing devices such as little bells on their clothing to alert, but not startle the bears unexpectedly. They also advise you to carry pepper spray in case of an encounter with a bear. It is also a good idea to watch for signs of bear activity. People should be able to recognize the difference between black bear and grizzly bear droppings. Black bear droppings are smaller and contain berries and possibly squirrel fur. Grizzly bear droppings have bells in them and smell like pepper spray.

Peter F. Drucker: (on what are the most important lessons he's learned) ----------------- I hope you don't mind if I give you four lessons. - The first one, I call Harry Truman's maxim. Which I heard him say many times. "If it has to be explained, it won't work." It will only work if it's so simple that everybody says it's obvious. - And second, say 'please' and 'thank you,' manners matter. They are the lubricating oil of human intercourse. They make it possible for people to work with one another. - Third, one that applies to me, as a professional writer, but it applies to anybody. If a sentence doesn't gel, don't rewrite it. It's not that the sentence is not right, your thoughts are not clear or not thought through. - And finally, never ask who's right. Start out by asking what is right. And you find that out by listening to dissenting, disagreeing opinions. Those are the four most important things I learned.

Planning is of no use at all unless it eventually degenerates into work.

The Indians asked their Chief in autumn, if the winter was going to be cold or not. Not really knowing an answer, the Chief replied that the winter was going to be cold and that the members of the village were to collect wood to be prepared. Being a good leader, he then went to the phone booth and called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is this winter to be cold?" The man on the phone responded, "This winter is going to be quite cold indeed." So the Chief went back to speed up his people, to collect even more wood to be prepared. A week later he called the National Weather Service again, "Is it going to be a very cold winter?" "Yes," the man replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter." So the Chief goes back to his people and orders them to go and find every scrap of wood they can find. Two weeks later he calls the National Weather Service again, "Are you absolutely sure that the winter is going to be *very* cold?" "Absolutely" the man replies, "the Indians are collecting wood like crazy."

You can't eat a recipe.

You heard about the man who asked a mail-order company to send plans for a birdhouse. Instead of sending him the plans for a birdhouse, they sent him plans for a sailboat. He tried to put it together, but it just wouldn't work. He couldn't figure what kind of bird was going to live in this dumb birdhouse. So he wrote a letter and sent the parts back to the people. They wrote a letter of apology and added this post script: "If you think it was difficult for you, you should have seen the man who got your plans trying to sail a birdhouse." What plan are you using to follow Christ? One copied from society?

Vance Havner was one of the most quotable preachers of the 20th century. Dennis Hester has devoted considerable effort to collecting and editing Havner's work, and his latest collection is When God Breaks Through (Kregel). It is a delightful gathering of revival sermons preached by Havner over the years. In one sermon, "Showdown on Mount Carmel," Havner points out that spiritual fire is "not worked up from down here. It comes from above. We must die to all the efforts of the flesh to please God, and then there will be plenty of use for sanctified enthusiasm, hard work, plans, programs, but only after the altar has been set on fire. "Fruit growers use baskets, and in the church we have to have organization methods and programs. They're important and necessary. But if the fruit crop fails and there's no life in the trees, you're not going to improve matters by buying better baskets. Today we're turning out the best baskets we've ever had, but there's a failure in the fruit crop."

Long-range planning does not deal with future decisions, but with the future of present decisions. -- Peter Drucker

The best plan is only a plan... unless it degenerates into work.

Better to be three hours too soon than one minute too late. -- Shakespeare

The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining. -- John F. Kennedy

The most dangerous thing in the world is to try to leap a chasm in two jumps." -- David Lloyd George

When I heard about Alice Pike's arrest, two questions came to mind. Alice is the woman who tried to pay for her Wal-Mart purchases with a $1 million bill. My two questions: "There isn't really a $1 million bill, is there?" and, "What was she thinking?" The answer to the first question is no, silly. The U.S. Treasury doesn't make a bank note with that many zeros. I don't know how high they do go, but thanks to Alice, nobody is going to con me on the million dollar one now. As far as what Alice was thinking, I don't believe she was. Alice went to the register with $1,675 worth of stuff. What is amazing is that she expected change. Math is not my strong suit, but by my calculation, that's a lot of change. Was Alice really expecting that the cashier not only would, but actually could, hand over $998,325.00? Did she envision the cashier on the loudspeaker saying, "We need 10's and 20's on aisle 5?" Did she even bring a vehicle big enough to handle her purchases and the mountain of change? Alice helps remind us of the irrationality of sin. Most sin doesn't make sense. We lie and expect good results. We overindulge in food or alcohol or entertainment and expect to feel better. We take what isn't ours and expect satisfaction. We refuse to resist temptation and expect peace. We act selfishly and expect stronger relationships. We ignore repentance and expect forgiveness. We hand over a fake and expect change.

I always keep a stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy.

You can always amend a big plan, but you can never expand a little one. I don't believe in little plans. I believe in plans big enough to meet a situation which we can't possibly foresee now. By: Harry Truman Source: Harry Truman in Harry S. Truman, Margaret Truman, Morrow & Company, 1973, page 78

New College, Oxford, is of rather late foundations, hence the name. It was founded around the late 14th century. It has, like other colleges, a great dining hall with big oak beams across the top, yes? These might be two feet square, forty-five feet long. A century ago, so I am told, some busy entomologist, went up into the root of the dining hall with a penknife and poked at the beams and found that they were full of beetles. This was reported to the College Council, who met in some dismay, because where would they get beams of that calibre nowadays? One of the Junior Fellows stuck his neck out and suggested that there might be on College lands some oak. These colleges are endowed with pieces of land scattered across the country. So they called in the College Forester, who of course had not been near the college itself for some years, and asked him about oaks. And he pulled his forelock and said, "Well sirs, we was wonderin' when you'd be askin". Upon further enquiry it was discovered that when the College was founded, a grove of oaks had been planted to replace the beams in the dinning hall when they became beetly, because oak beams always become beetly in the end. This plan had been passed down from one Forester to the next for five hundred years. "You don't cut them oaks. Them's for the College Hall." A nice story. That's the way to run a culture.

Another illustration of our lack of self-knowledge comes from a study in which researches asked a group of college students to choose a series of snacks. Each week they had a three-hour seminar with one break that allowed participants to stretch their legs, use the bathroom, clear their heads, and have something to eat. When the professor asked the students to pick a snack for each of the next three weeks, the students picked a variety, thinking they'd get tired of the same snack each week. In contrast, another group in the same study got to choose their snack every week, and tehse students, choosing one week at a time, tended to choose the same thing each week. These two sets of participants were faced with different tasks. The students who were choosing one snack at a time simply had to ask themselves what they felt like eating at the moment. Those who were choosing for three weeks had to <i>predict</i> what they would feel like eating two or three weeks from the moment of choice.

In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement the hell out of it.